-THE  WAR  FOR  THE 
WORLD 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK  •   BOSTON   •   CHICAGO   •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA   •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  LOOTED 

LONDON   •  BOMBAY    •  CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  LTD. 

TORONTO 


THE 
WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 


BY 
ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 

AUTHOR  OF  "  ITALIAN  FANTASIES,"  "  CHILDREN  OF 
THE  GHETTO,"  ETC. 


CHANCELLOR  OF  GOTHA: 
Once  Alba's  vanquished,  Europe's  at  our  feet. 
And  have  we  Europe  then  the  world  is  ours." 

COUNT  FRITHIOF: 
"  What  shall  it  profit  a  race  to  gain  the 
world  and  lose  its  soul  ?  " 

"  THE  WAR  GOD  "   (ACT  I.) 


fork 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
1916 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 
By  ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 


COPYRIGHT,  1915 
THE  METROPOLITAN  MAGAZINE  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1916 

BY  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 
Set  up  and  electrotyped.    Published  July,  1916. 


TO 
THE  ENGLISHMAN 

Too  modest  to  be  named 
Too  unassuming  to  question  his  government's  wisdom  or 

righteousness 
who  abandoning  all  worldly  and  with  no  other-worldly  hopes 

went  to  the  front 
as  simply  as  in  the  daily 

war  for  the  world 
and  returned  crippled  and  uncomplaining  save  of  his 

uselessness  to  his  country 

this  book — of  which  he  might  not  wholly  approve — 
is — without  permission  but  with  admiring  affection — 

DEDICATED. 


343104 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE,  WITH  AN  APOLOGIA 

FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN i 

THE  WAR  DEVIL 79 

LAMENT .• 88 

PARADISE  LOST 91 

THE  SHADOWS  OF  SOCIETY 96 

THE  NEXT  WAR 97 

ARMS  AND  THE  MAN 104 

THE  RUINED  ROMANTICS in 

ON  THE  COAST 124 

THE  GODS  OF  GERMANY 125 

MILITARISM,  BRITISH  AND  PRUSSIAN 135 

ARMS  AND  THE  BAND 141 

THE  MODEL  MONSTER 147 

SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY 154 

THE  KAISER  AT  THE  JUDGMENT  BAR 170 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA 175 

THE  Two  EMPIRES 195 

THE  LEVITY  OF  WAR-POLITICS 196 

THE  PLACE  OF  PEACE 211 

THE  MILITARY  PACIFISTS 213 

THE  ABSURD  SIDE  OF  ALLIANCES 221 

THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORDS 228 

NOVELISTS  AND  THE  WAR 233 

WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME 240 

APPENDIX 248 

ON  CATCHING  UP  A  LIE 250 

PATRIOTISM  AND  PERCENTAGE 255 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  CHURCHES 265 

WRITTEN  BY  A  JEW  THIS  CHRISTMAS  EVE 277 

vii 


VU1  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

MR.  MOREL  AND  THE  CONGO 278 

THE  AWKWARD  AGE  OF  THE  WOMEN'S  MOVEMENT 287 

THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS 298 

PROLOGUE  FOR  A  WOMEN'S  THEATRE 319 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  WOMEN 321 

(1)  WOMAN  AS  WORKER 321 

(2)  WOMAN  AS  FIGHTER 330 

(3)  WOMAN  AS  PEACEMAKER 337 

WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT! 344 

FOR  SMALL  MERCIES 357 

ROSY  RUSSIA 358 

AT  THE  CONGRESS 369 

THE  STORY  OF  THE  STEAM-ROLLER 371 

BEZALEL 373 

THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS 374 

"RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS " 405 

(Two  LETTERS  TO  THE  NATION.) 

ON  THE  DEATH  OF  HERZL 414 

THE  JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT 415 

Two  LETTERS  TO  "THE  TIMES " 449 

ENVOI:  OLIVER  SINGING 455 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 


SOME    PROGNOSTICATIONS    AND    A    PREFACE 
WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO- 
GERMAN 

"This  war  is  in  reality  a  life  and  death  struggle  between  two  forms 
of  State,  one  retrograde  and  no  longer  capable,  the  other  far  advanced 
and  capable  of  the  most  powerful  activities.  Either  Germany  with 
its  organization  and  ideas  will  be  destroyed  in  this  war,  or  England, 
if  it  is  to  live  at  all,  must  rebuild  its  institutions  and  introduce  that 
Continental  form  of  State  of  which  Germany  is  the  most  shining 
example." — PROFESSOR  EDUARD  MEYER. 

"Because  these  (German  aims  and  methods)  have  a  loathy  side, 
and  because  these  endanger  our  commerce,  our  institutions,  our  very 
existence,  we  must  not  in  our  perfectly  legitimate  anger  ignore  the 
fact  that  they  could  not  have  given  Germany  her  present  strength 
without  much  good  being  mixed  with  the  evil." — Morning  Post,  8th 
February,  1916. 

"Fight  the  Germans  like  the  Germans." — MR.  AUSTIN  HARRISON. 


In  these  dark  and  unbalanced  days,  when  mass-psychol- 
ogy can  ill  support  any  contradiction  of  the  prevailing 
temper,  it  is  necessary,  I  am  aware,  for  an  obdurate  Anti- 
German  like  myself  to  walk  somewhat  gingerly.  But  if 
I  am  unable  to  surrender  myself  to  the  current  idolatry  of 
German  State-institutions,  and  the  contagion  of  Prussian 
militarism;  if  the  enthusiasm  for  German  organization 
leaves  me  cold,  and  the  scrapping  of  Magna  Charta  hot; 
if  I  .have  shown  in  so  much  of  my  work — as  that  popular 
Labor-organ,  the  Herald,  complains — too  great  a  bias 


2  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

against  Germany,  and  ignored  the  cultural  and  socialistic 
sides  of  her  State-concept,  something  must  be  allowed  in 
extenuation  to  the  force  of  early  impressions.  For  it  so 
happened  that  my  very  first  experience  of  Germany  was 
one  calculated  to  quicken  my  instinctive  loathing  for  the 
Bismarckized  State,  and  to  crystallize  my  vague  intuitions 
of  the  coming  clash  between  British  and  German  State- 
concepts  in  a  war  for  the  world. 

II 

I  was  returning  to  England  from  Italy  with  a  through 
ticket  via  the  Netherlands  when  suddenly  from  the  corridor 
of  the  train  appeared  a  new  conductor,  demanding  my 
Fahrkarte.  With  a  weary  sigh — for  I  had  shown  it  so  often 
and  would  have  to  show  it  so  often  again  before  reaching 
London — I  produced  the  be-clipped  and  mutilated  pass 
that  had  begun  life  as  a  beautiful  Biglietto.  Alas!  its  con- 
ductor-crushing career  seemed  over.  For  my  official  wae 
still  aggressive.  Ensued  a  duologue  in  German. 

"But  where  is  your  seat-ticket?" 

"This  is  it." 

"No!  You  have  no  right  to  be  sitting  here  without  i 
seat-ticket!" 

"I  have  been  sitting  here  since  Rome." 

"You  are  not  in  Italy  now,  you  are  in  Germany."  ( 
began  to  feel  it  was  indeed  so.)  "You  must  pay  two  mark 
for  your  place." 

"But  my  ticket  shows  I  have  paid  all  the  way  to  London.' 

"Nevertheless  in  Germany  you  must  pay  for  you 
seat." 

"But  I  must  sit  somewhere." 

"And  every  seat  must  be  paid  for." 

I  believed  his  claim  now,  but  I  resented  his  manner. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN        3 

"Very  well  then— I  will  stand/' 

"Es  ist  verboten — the  seats  must  be  sat  on." 

"Then  I  will  stand  in  the  corridor."  And  I  walked 
haughtily  without.  He  was  unimpressed. 

"You  cannot  stand  in  the  corridor.  Es  ist  verboten. 
Either  you  pay  for  your  seat  or  you  leave  the  train." 

"That  is  nonsense — on  arriving  at  Munich  I  will  pay,  if 
I  am  assured  the  charge  is  correct." 

"You  will  not  get  to  Munich — I  shall  put  you  out  at 
the  next  station." 

"You  cannot  do  that.    Es  ist  verboten." 

He  glowered.    "I  will  put  you  out  at  the  next  station." 

"But  my  luggage  is  in  the  van." 

"That  is  your  look-out." 

And  deliberately  placing  in  his  wallet  my  elaborate  and 
expensive  ticket,  which  he  had  been  holding  in  his  hand, 
he  closed  the  bag  with  the  snap  of  a  steel  trap. 

I  felt  caught  in  it!  To  be  put  down  at  a  wayside  German 
station,  without  ticket,  luggage,  or  adequate  funds,  with 
no  remedy  but  an  action  for  recovery  against  the  railway 
company,  which  would  at  the  best  detain  me  weeks  in 
Germany — it  was  not  an  alluring  prospect.  Suddenly 
over  the  window  of  the  carriage  I  perceived  the  painted 
words — sinister  as  the  inscription  over  the  gate  of  Dante's 
Hell:  "For  Eight  Officers." 

So  the  Railway  Company  was  then  either  the  German 
Government,  or  already  part  of  its  war-organization!  I 
paid  the  two  marks. 

Ill 

Even  Switzerland,  I  thought  during  a  melodramatic 
episode  at  Basle  station  in  the  small  hours,  was  beginning 
to  be  infected  with  Berlin  Bumbledom.  It  was  an  August 
night,  unbearably  sultry,  and  a  crowd  of  passengers  chang- 


4  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

ing  their  train  were  stuffed  into  a  little  waiting  room,  there 
to  pass  an  hour  or  so.  I  left  it  and  strolled  into  the  spacious 
station,  drawing  a  breath  of  relief. 

"Where  are  you  going?"     A  dread  being  in  uniform 
blocked  my  way. 

"To  wait  on  the  platform  for  my  train,"  I  replied  in  my 
best  Swiss-German. 

"You  cannot  wait  on  the  platform.    Es  ist  verboten." 

"Why?" 

"Because  if  you  did,  others  would  go  there." 

"And  why  should  they  not?" 

"Because  then  those  who  were  there  would  get  into  th( 
train  first." 

"And  why  not?    First  come,  first  served." 

"Es  ist  verboten!    There  would  be  a  crowd  on  the  plat 
form." 

"Better  than  a  crowd  in  that  stifling  room.    I  canno 
stay  there." 

"You  must." 

"I  will  not.    The  railway  company  is  my  servant.    I  ar 
not  its  servant." 

Sensation.  He  went  away  and  returned  with  a  sti 
more  ornamented  official,  who  however  equally  failed  t 
move  me — at  least  by  his  words.  The  plot  thickenec 
A  file  of  soldiers  arrived  with  fixed  bayonets  and  clod 
work  attitudes.  But  other  passengers  gathered  round  ar 
endorsed  my  view  of  the  Black  Hole  of  Basle.  Before  n 
free-born  defiance  officialdom  was  paralyzed — the  prote 
was  apparently  unprecedented  in  the  history  of  the  static 

But  it  seemed  to  me  intolerable  that  Switzerland  shou 
go  the  way  of  Prussia.  There  was  a  deadlock,  as  in  t 
trenches  of  Flanders.  At  this  moment  a  third  official  car 
up — in  a  somewhat  different  style  of  decoration  and  a] 
of  a  more  gentlemanly  cast.  He  enquired  into  the  cai 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN        5 

of  the  disturbance  and  having  heard  both  sides,  he  turned 
to  me  and  said  politely:  "I  should  strongly  advise  you, 
mein  Herr,  not  to  resist,  or  there  will  be  very  considerable 
trouble." 

I  was  disappointed  and  outraged:  "What!"  I  cried  in 
wilfully  dramatic  accents.  "In  Switzerland,  which  we  in 
England  have  always  looked  upon  as  the  land  par  excellence 
of  Freedom!" 

"This  is  not  my  land,"  explained  the  gentlemanly  Swiss. 
"This  is  the  German  part  of  the  station." 

I  understood. 

But  this  was  not  the  end,  for  as  I  refused  to  return  to 
the  room  even  though  it  was  Prussian,  porters  appeared 
with  a  long  rope,  with  which  a  space  was  roped  off  in  the 
station  immediately  outside  the  asphyxiating  little  room, 
and  here,  penned  like  cattle  at  market,  we  stood  in  the 
dead  of  night  till  our  Prussian  train,  punctual  to  the 
second,  rolled  obediently  into  its  appointed  platform. 

IV 

Our  treatment  enabled  me  to  appreciate  more  vividly 
the  callous  handling  of  the  thousands  of  poor  Jews  whom 
for  many  years  it  was  a  function  of  an  organization  over 
which  I  presided,  to  emigrate  via  Germany.  Constant 
and  perennial  were  the  complaints  of  cruelty  both  at  the 
German  frontier  stations  and  on  board  the  German  steam- 
ers. Once  the  brutality  was  so  palpable  that  I  actually 
succeeded  in  getting  a  couple  of  naval  officers  dismissed. 
But  as  a  rule  it  was  less  acts  of  tyranny  than  a  pervasive 
atmosphere  of  harshness  and  contempt,  difficult  to  cope 
with,  but  embittering  the  lot  of  the  steerage  passengers, 
already  suffering  sufficiently  from  exile,  poverty  and  sea- 
sickness. To  dispense  with  the  German  lines  in  favor  for 


6  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

example  of  Dutch,  was  impossible,  because  Germa 
simply  forbade  emigrants  to  pass  through  her  territ< 
unless  provided  with  sailing-tickets  for  her  vessels.  A 
this  is  the  Germany  that  prates  of  the  freedom  of  the  se 
The  outbreak  of  hostilities  between  our  respective  coi 
tries  served  to  suspend  them  between  my  organizat 
and  a  great  German  Shipping  Company  which  was  vai 
demanding  an  apology  from  our  Russian  representat 
for  his  outspoken  statements  concerning  the  treatment 
emigrants.  The  Chairman  with  whom  I  had  been  in  c< 
troversial  correspondence  blossomed  out  into  a  Colonel 
the  famous  Prussian  Guard.  That  seemed  to  throw  a  ba 
light  on  the  whole  business. 


Even  as  an  author  I  have  suffered  from  the  Germans, 
one  of  the  greatest  tortures  of  my  life  was  reading  the  pro 
of  my  novels  in  German.  When  I  reflect  that  my  transla 
was  a  popular  novelist  who  has  since  become  famous  by 
vigorous  verse  against  England,  I  cannot  help  suspect 
that  his  translation  was  a  premature  act  of  war.  I 
rendering  of  a  nursery  reference  to  "Baby  Bunting  "  I  hi 
never  forgotten.  It  was  turned  into  "Babys  Flagg 
Such  is  the  insidious  effect  of  Militarismus. 

Socially  too  my  Teutonic  experiences  have  not  been  c 
tivating.  The  beer-regurgitating  face-slashed  student  of 
Kneipe  and  the  duelling  ground  has  always  seemed  to  m 
barbarian  type  of  young  man :  my  esurient  and  lip-smack 
neighbors  at  Teutonic  tables  dhote  have  never  impres 
me  as  the  latest  models  of  refinement;  nor  have  I  been  o\ 
come  by  the  Kultur  of  the  tourists  who,  with  opera-glas 
slung  across  their  portly  bosoms,  ejaculate  their  monoton 
"Wunderschonl"  before  every  mountain  or  miniati 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN        7 

I  have  loved  the  old  towns  and  the  life  at  Munich  and  Dres- 
den but  I  have  never  been  at  ease  in  the  Zion  of  the  German 
salon,  with  its  heavy  spirit-constricting  furniture.  And  one 
of  the  greatest  shocks  I  ever  received  in  a  drawing-room 
was  when  Wagner's  stepdaughter  (the  Countess  Gravina) 
imparted  to  me  that  Jesus  was  not  born  into  my  race  but 
was  a  pure  Aryan.  I  was  not  then  aware  of  the  copious 
literature  on  the  subject  with  its  humorless  demonstra- 
tion that  the  founder  of  Christianity  was  a  German.  Of 
course  the  Countess  was  merely  echoing  her  relative, 
Houston  Stewart  Chamberlain,  who  remarks  urbanely: 
"  Whoever  maintains  that  Christ  was  a  Jew  is  either  ig- 
norant or  a  liar."  She  may  even  have  agreed  with 
Herr  Max  Bewer  that  Jesus  was  of  Rhenish- Westphalian 
origin.1 

So  if  the  readers  of  the  Morning  Post  find  me  in  as  im- 
perfect affinity  with  the  Germans  as  Charles  Lamb  was  with 
the  Jews,  they  will  know  it  is  not  from  mere  eccentricity  or 
conservatism,  but  from  a  reasonable  antipathy  to  spiritual 
swagger  and  mediaeval  militarism,  accompanied  by  bump- 
tiousness and  cruelty.  Repugnance  to  Prussianism  is  too 
inracinated  in  my  breast  to  be  uprooted  merely  because  the 
German  machine  has  ground  out  a  few  victories.  Rather 
do  I  feel  like  Herbert  Spencer  at  the  Athenaeum  Club, 
when  having  inadvertently  challenged  a  young  billiard- 
champion,  he  remarked  solemnly  after  his  astonishing  lick- 
ing: "  Young  man!  To  play  billiards  as  I  do  shows  a  sensible 
care  for  recreation,  but  to  play  billiards  as  you  do  argues 
a  great  deal  of  wasted  time."  The  German  machine,  ac- 
cording to  Dr.  Sadler,  who  seems  not  far  from  admiring 
it,  cannot  be  imitated  in  parts:  it  works  only  as  a  whole. 

1 A  new  book,  Die  Erde  und  unsere  Ahnen,  proves  that  Moses  was  born  in 
the  Harz  mountains,  Jerusalem  was  the  North  German  town  of  Goslar 
and  Solomon's  Temple  stood  on  the  Brocken  Mountain. 


8  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

And  I  must  firmly  refuse  to  have  Prussia  at  any  price, 
even  at  the  risk  of  being  considered  an  early  Edwardian. 

VI 

Early  in  the  nineties,  even  before  Edward  VII  had  con- 
tracted his  apprehension  of  Germany  and  while  Nietzsche 
lay  hidden  in  the  decent  obscurity  of  the  German  language 
unknown  and  unmentioned  in  England — O  halcyon  fabular 
period! — I  was  couching  the  lance  of  levity  at  this  inspired 
misleader  of  modern  thought,  and  throwing  off  irreverent 
impressions  of  the  Kaiser  who  had  come  in  a  cocked  hat 
to  Venice  to  visit  Umberto  I — even  at  that  delirious  mo- 
ment of  music  and  pageantry  I  see  that  I  wondered  ho\\ 
long  the  Italian  Alliance  would  last — and  had  inconsider- 
ately moored  his  great  white  yacht,  the  Hohenzollern 
exactly  opposite  my  window. 

"This  young  man,"  I  wrote,1  "from  all  I  have  observe< 
since  he  became  my  neighbor,  lives  a  highly  colored  dramati 
existence,  in  which  there  are  sixty  minutes  to  every  hour,  an< 
sixty  seconds  to  every  minute,  the  sort  of  life  that  should  hav 
pleased  Walter  Pater.  He  must  be  a  disciple  of  Nietzsche, 
lover  of  the  strong  and  splendid,  this  German  gentleman  wh 
is  just  off  to  Vienna  to  prance  at  the  head  of  fifteen  hundre 
horsemen.  While  he  lived  opposite  me  it  was  all  excursior 
and  alarums.  As  a  neighbor  an  Emperor  is  distinctly  noisy." 

I  proceed  to  point  out — while  admitting  his  exception; 
virtues  for  a  King — the  danger  which  a  monarch,  with  such 
nursery  passion  for  playing  at  soldiers,  was  to  a  sem 
constitutional  country  like  Germany,  "a  country  ove 
civilized  in  thought  and  under-civilized  in  action,"  and 
propos  of  Nietzsche's  teaching  I  wrote: 

1  See  my  book,  Without  Prejudice  (originally  published  in  the  Pall  M 
Magazine). 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN        9 

"Human  nature  is  like  Venice  or  Holland — a  province  slowly 
wrested  from  the  sea,  and  secured  by  dams  or  dykes.  Woe  to 
him  who  makes  a  breach  in  the  sea-walls!" 

For  here  is  the  true  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD — this  perpetual 
struggle  of  land  and  sea,  this  tenacious  beating  of  the  waves 
of  barbarism  against  the  dykes  of  civilization,  to  regain  the 
ground  won  from  the  waste  of  waters;  this  tireless  labor 
of  the  forces  of  Good  to  conserve  their  gains  and  reclaim 
marshes  yet  undrained. 

VII 

It  is  not  only  the  Dutch  who  have 

"With  mad  labor  fished  the  land  to  shore." 

Marvell's  lines  apply  to  many  another  territory  netted 
from  the  ocean. 

"How  did  they  rivet  with  gigantic  piles, 
Thorough  the  centre  their  new-catched  miles, 
And  to  the  stake  a  struggling  country  bound 
Where  barking  waves  still  beat  the  forced  ground." 

Those  who  are  familiar  with  our  oozy  Eastern  coast  are 
aware  how  much  soil  there  is  which  is  halfway  or  at  every 
other  stage  between  land  and  water.  We  have  for  example 
saltings  which  may  be  grazed  over  at  certain  times  but  not, 
say,  during  the  high  spring  tides,  or  which,  reclaimed  by  a 
sea-wall,  rise  to  the  status  of  marshes;  we  have  sands  now 
impassable,  now  high  and  dry;  we  have  pasture-land  which 
gradually  improves  into  arable  land,  and  responds  regularly 
to  the  plough.  What  is  "fleet "  or  creek  at  noon  is  causeway 
at  sunset,  and  where  the  cowman  strode  at  sunrise,  eels 
may  gambol  at  twilight.  The  battle  between  sea  and  land, 
with  man  as  ally  or  negligent  neutral,  goes  on  pauselessly 


10  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND   A  PREFACE 

all  along  the  line,  with  here  a  retreat  and  there  an  advance, 
and  with  on  the  whole  a  measurable  shrinkage  of  land  or  a 
definite  repulse  of  sea. 

This  is  precisely  the  battle  of  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman  in 
the  spiritual  war-zone.    But,  carried  on  obscurely  and  con- 
tinuously at  points  innumerable  in  periods  of  superficial 
peace,  it  is  not  often  that  it  ranges  itself  so  visibly  and  pic- 
turesquely as  in  the  rival  battalions  of  Great  Britain  and 
Germany,  nor  that  a  war  for  the  world  between  two  Great 
Powers  coincides  so  closely  with  the  elemental  clash  of  Good 
and  Evil.    Were  the  contest  limited  to  those  Powers,  with 
no  complications  of  Allies,  black,  white  or  yellow,  and  could 
we  be  sure  that  the  victory  of  England  would  mean  the 
defeat  of  Germany  and  not  its  spiritual  domination,  then 
despite  England's  iniquities  and  shortcomings  in  other  di 
rections,  we  might  almost  say  that  the  coincidence  is  ab 
solute.    For  what  is  Prussian  Militarism  but  a  re-swamping 
of  the  territory  dyked  and  cultivated  by  the  painful  labo 
of  generations? 

VIII 

Unfortunately  the  effort  to  "fight  the  Germans  like  th 
Germans"  only  begets  more  Germanism.    I  am  reminds 
of  the  police  official  who  tried  to  arrest  some  Dukhobors  fc 
going  about  stark  naked.    In  the  heat  of  the  chase — fc 
they  fled  before  him — he  threw  off  his  coat,  and  then  h 
waistcoat,  and  then  his  trousers,  and  by  the  time  he  ha 
come  up  with  them,  you  could  not  tell  him  from  Adam  or 
Dukhobor.    Even  so  the  method  of  military  resistance  1 
militarism,  which  is  like  the  defensive  opening  of  the  sluio 
in  the  Low  Countries,  merely  co-operates  with  the  oncomir 
ocean  in  ruining  the  territory  defended.    A  deluge — Water 
nood,  as  they  say  in  Holland, — is  now  upon  us,  racing  ai 
foaming  towards  our  islet  of  civilization  from  every  quart 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      II 

of  the  compass.  Let  me  give  one  little  example — the  book, 
The  Way  of  the  Red  Cross,  with  a  touching  Preface  by 
Queen  Alexandra  though  as  marvellous  a  record  of  human 
kindness  as  the  Times'  Fund  is  of  journalistic  achievement, 
yet  blurs  over  the  fact  that  the  Red  Cross  is  not  a  mere 
medical  branch  of  the  British  Army — if  it  were,  the  War 
Office  should  pay  for  it — nor  even  a  voluntary  addition  to 
the  British  Army,  but  a  Christ-like  body  working  "above 
the  battle,"  and  bound  to  devote  equal  care  to  the  wounded 
enemy.  It  is  only  as  it  were  through  a  slip  of  the  pen  that 
we  learn  from  one  passage  of  this  book  that  there  are 
German  wounded  under  the  care  of  our  Red  Cross  corps. 
It  seems  to  be  feared  that  subscriptions  would  fall  off,  if 
Britons  remembered  too  clearly  that  this  work  of  mercy  was 
international  work.  Here  then  is  a  distinct  loss  of  spiritual 
territory  once  reclaimed  from  barbarism — the  sea  is  back 
again  amid  the  ruins  of  our  groins  and  embankments.  Mr. 
Bertrand  Russell  even  asserts: — 

"On  the  Western  front,  at  least,  both  sides  have  long  ceased 
to  take  prisoners,  except  in  large  batches.  I  have  heard  an 
innocent-faced  young  Scotsman  boasting  to  a  fellow-soldier, 
amid  roars  of  laughter,  that  he  had  bayonetted  a  disarmed 
German  who  knelt  before  him  imploring  mercy." 

What  the  Germans  on  their  side  have  done  we  know  from 
Lord  Bryce's  Report.  But  if  there  is  any  truth  in  the  Ap- 
peal of  the  Anti-Slavery  and  Aborigines  Protection  Society, 
our  officials  during  a  riot  in  Ceylon  have  behaved  like  the 
Germans  in  Belgium,  if  happily  only  on  a  small  scale.  As 
for  their  doings  in  Ireland —  ! 

DC 

The  Dutch — when  a  flood  is  impending — appoint  in  all 
threatened  areas  a  local  dijk  graaf  or  Dyke-Reeve  with 


12  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

full  military  rights  over  the  polder-land,  to  take  whatever 
measures  are  necessary  for  its  salvation.  Where  are  our 
Dyke-Reeves  before  the  Watersnood  now  fast  reducing 
Europe  to  a  spiritual  swamp?  They  are  not  to  be  found 
in  the  Cabinets,  for  the  statesman — Lord  Haldane  has  told 
us  frankly,  though  I  cannot  find  it  in  Hegel — must  follow, 
not  lead,  public  opinion.  The  politician  and  the  public 
can  in  fact  only  advance,  like  two  drunken  men,  by  leaning 
on  each  other.  Nor  does  the  Press — that  reflex  of  the  ad- 
vertiser and  the  reader — afford  an  escape  from  this  vicious 
circle.  The  Stage  is  even  more  swiftly  at  the  mercy  of  the 
mob,  drawing  still  more  costly  breath.  The  Church — 
well,  after  all,  vox  populi  vox  del — is  a  theological  propo- 
sition. 

There  indeed  remain  a  few  personalities — in  the  Lords, 
the  Commons,  the  Press,  even  the  Church,  that  have  not 
bowed  the  knee  to  Baal.  But  even  journalists  who  do  not 
pander  to  the  public  and  its  idols  have  been  so  disequili- 
brated  by  the  war  that  I  have,  on  entering  Fleet  Street  by 
what  remains  of  Temple  Bar,  sometimes  looked  up  expect- 
ing to  see  the  inscription:  "  Abandon  sense  all  ye  who  enter 
here; "  followed  perhaps  by  "For  three  years  or  the  dura- 
tion of  the  war." 

In  this  general  neglect  of  the  dykes  at  a  time  when  the 
danger  from  their  neglect  is  at  a  maximum,  I  am  impellec 
to  present  myself  at  the  post  of  national  duty  as  a  dyke 
custodian,  a  trustee  of  civilization — self-appointed. 

X 

But  even  a  self-appointed  functionary  may  tender  hi 
credentials  and  I  respectfully  beg  to  offer,  in  proof  of  m; 
qualifications  for  the  place,  a  record  of  many  years  of  vigi 
lance  as  a  coastguard  on  the  shore  of  the  German  Ocear 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      13 

It  is  this  record  indeed  which  makes  it  so  difficult  for  me 
to  pose  suddenly  as  a  pro-German.  My  parlor-maid  said 
to  her  mistress  the  day  Armageddon  broke  out:  "The 
Germans  are  on  our  side,  aren't  they,  mum?"  On  being 
corrected,  she  duly  proceeded  to  hate  them.  But  I  un- 
fortunately have  a  miso- Gothic  past.  That  would  not 
matter  if  I  were  a  politician,  for  a  politician  has  only  a 
future.  But  litera  scripta  manet — if  only  in  the  British 
Museum — and  my  uncomfortable  prevision  of  the  menace 
to  modern  civilization  implicit  in  a  race  of  Huns,  not  com- 
ing from  without  like  the  shatterers  of  the  Roman  Empire, 
but  begotten  at  the  very  centre  of  that  civilization,  com- 
mitted me  a  la  Cassandra  to  a  series  of  fulminations  and 
predictions  that  cannot  well  be  explained  away. 

XI 

At  the  end  of  1907  for  example,  when  the  waves  of 
Gothic  barbarism  threatened  to  submerge  Prussian  Poland, 
whose  four  million  Poles  the  Reichstag — at  the  instigation 
of  the  "Hakatists"  with  their  policy  of  Ausrotten — pro- 
posed to  expropriate  and  replace  by  Prussians  proper,  the 
illustrious  Polish  novelist,  Sinkiewicz,  made  an  appeal  to 
"the  conscience  of  the  world." 

In  the  .polyglot  volume  he  published  at  Paris,  entitled 
Prusse  et  Pologne,  I  find  myself  protesting  as  follows, 
under  date  January  the  first,1  1908: 

1  It  is  odd  that  Sinkiewicz,  though  he  appealed  to  250  persons  throughout 
the  world,  did  not  apparently  regard  any  ecclesiastic  as  incarnating  its  con- 
science. But  then  I  remember  at  the  beginning  of  the  Twentieth  Century 
diagnosing  the  dangers  that  threatened  it,  side  by  side  with  the  then  Arch- 
bishop of  Canterbury,  who  replied  like  the  Mad  Hatter  that  he  "had  no 
idea."  Mr.  Wells,  it  is  interesting  to  find,  replied  with  similar  modesty  to 
Sinkiewicz,  disclaiming  knowledge  of  Polish  politics.  He  had  not  then  spent 
his  famous  fortnight  in  Russia. 


14  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

"I  feel  honored  that  my  opinion  should  be  sought  by  so 
illustrious  a  writer  as  yourself,  but  I  fear  it  will  give  you  scanty 
comfort.  As  a  Jew,  I  cannot  agree  with  you  that  the  proposed 
outrage  upon  German  Poles  is  '  the  greatest  iniquity  and  infamy 
in  the  history  of  the  Twentieth  Century;'  that  abominable  title 
has  already  been  earned  by  the  massacres  of  the  Jews  in  Russia, 
carried  out  with  official  connivance  and  under  circumstances 
of  atrocity  which  have  no  parallel  even  in  mediaeval  times.  I 
cannot  believe  that  the  twentieth  century  reserves  for  us  a 
deeper  horror.  But  this  is  almost  the  only  hope  I  can  permit 
myself  of  a  century  that  has  seen  this  occur  with  no  effective 
protest.  Might  is  recognized  as  the  rule  of  life,  Christianity 
has  been  deposed  even  from  the  lips  of  Governments.  It  rarely 
was  anywhere  else;  but  our  century  has  grown  too  self-conscious 
to  be  able  to  leave  it  even  this  last  resting-place. 

"In  this  degeneration  of  the  human  conscience  Germany 
has  played  perhaps  the  leading  role.    After  the  brutal  Germani- 
fication  of  the  French  provinces,  I  cannot  see  why  you  should 
be  so  astonished  at  the  same  treatment  being  extended  to  the 
Polish  districts.     Europe  offered  no  protest  against  the  iror 
hand  re-moulding  Alsace  and  Lorraine  as  a  sculptor  remodels 
his  wax  faces,  why  should  you  expect  Europe  to  interfere  or 
behalf  of  the  Poles?    Whence,  cher  maitre,  come  your  optimism 
your  generous  belief  in  the  power  of  'the  pillars  of  civilizatioi 
and  intellectual  culture! '    You  and  I  should  know  that  a  peopl< 
that  has  lost  its  power  of  military  resistance  is  the  doomed  pre? 
of  the  nations  with  teeth  and  claws;  though  by  another  law  o 
nature  teeth  and  claws  never  suffice  to  destroy  it  utterly.    I 
develops  cunning  to  match  the  claws,  and  finds  ways  of  lyin 
low.    The  only  force  that  can  utterly  dissolve  a  people  is  love 
The  wax  face  which,  however  moulded,  will  retain  some  trac 
of  its  original  lineaments,  can  be  entirely  melted  by  the  heat  c 
love — by  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity.1     But  this  recip 
for  assimilating  races  is  rarely  tried,  and  even  when  it  is  begui 
mankind  is  rarely  patient  enough  to  carry  it  through.     Th 

1 A  captain  in  the  Austrian  Polish  Legion  said  he  was  fighting  for  tl 
Austrians  because  of  Austria's  good  treatment  of  the  Poles. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      15 

new  persecution  of  the  Poles  will  therefore  only  serve  to  accen- 
tuate the  Polish  nationality. 

"Throughout  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  under 
the  inspiration  of  the  generous  policy  of  the  Sigismunds,  Poland 
was  the  chief  land  of  refuge  for  the  Jews,  and  it  is  a  thousand 
pities  that  hosts  and  guests  should  now  alike  be  swamped  by 
the  forces  of  barbarism.  The  Germany  of  Goethe  and  Schiller, 
of  Kant  and  Beethoven,  to  which  humanity  turned  in  reverence, 
has  been  replaced  by  a  Germany  of  blood  and  iron,  a  Germany, 
which  as  the  Hague  Conference  proved,  burdens  all  Europe  with 
an  ever  increasing  tax  for  armaments  and  is  ready  to  sow  the 
waters  of  the  world  with  submarine  mines:  a  Germany  from 
which  we  turn  shuddering.  It  only  needs  the  dispossession  of 
the  Poles  for  Germany  to  lose  her  last  lingering  hold  upon  those 
whose  respect  is  not  for  might  but  for  civilization.  Let  her 
true  patriots  look  to  it,  let  them  learn  from  the  case  of  Hungary 
that  even  from  a  material  point  of  view  it  does  not  pay  to  defy 
humanity's  slowly  evolved  ideals  of  right  and  justice.  Each 
of  us  can  see  the  mote  in  his  brother's  eye  and  justice  has  thus 
still  a  certain  almost  universal  support  among  those  uncon- 
cerned in  the  particular  issue — naturally  always  the  majority 
of  mankind. 

"Writing  on  the  first  of  the  year,  I  can  but  wish  for  you  and 
your  brother  Poles,  that  the  new  year  will  witness  the  collapse 
of  this  lamentable  and  impolitic  policy." 

XII 

At  the  May  Meeting  of  a  Peace  Society,  some  six  months 
before  Sinkiewicz  issued  his  appeal  I  find  myself  rebuking 
the  shallow  optimism  of  the  late  Mr.  Stead,  with  whom  I 
had  already  crossed  olive-branches  at  a  prior  Peace  Meet- 
ing, when  after  a  tour  of  all  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe 
he  reported  enthusiastically  that  the  Millennium  was  al- 
most upon  us : 

"I  take  the  opportunity,"  I  wrote,  "of  reminding  Mr.  Stead 


1 6  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

that  more  good  will  be  done  by  facing  the  brutal  facts  of  life 
and  the  European  situation  than  by  allowing  the  wish  that 
war  shall  cease  to  be  father  to  the  thought  that  it  is  ceasing. 
When  Mr.  Stead  and  I  were  last  together  on  a  peace  platform, 
he  maintained  that  I  was  unduly  pessimistic  in  the  face  of  a 
most  glorious  prospect  of  universal  peace  and  disarmament. 
I  said  it  was  very  doubtful  if  disarmament  would  be  brought 
at  all  nearer  by  this  conference,  and  that  Germany  was  the 
enemy.  Mr.  Stead  insisted  that  the  Kaiser  was  the  greatest 
peace  lover  in  Europe,  and  apparently  only  wore  so  many 
uniforms  for  amusement.  I  venture  to  repeat  that  those  who 
preach  against  war  must  never  under-rate  its  glamour,  and  par- 
ticularly the  great  vested  interests  which  depend  upon  its  con- 
tinuance. It  is  only  by  education,  by  creating  the  glamour  of 
peace,  to  offset  the  glamour  of  war,  that  any  real  amelioration 
can  be  effected.  I  need  not  say  I  am  in  the  greatest  sympathy 
with  the  objects  of  your  meeting;  but  your  peace  crusade  wil 
need  an  enormously  greater  organization  to  make  any  dinfc 
upon  the  mailed  battalions  of  war." 

To  add  to  the  difficulty  of  my  turning  pro- German  now 
I  actually  placed  the  responsibility  for  the  coming  war  01 
Germany's  shoulders  years  before  she  had  written  Austria' 
ultimatum  to  Serbia,  and  like  Mrs.  Partington  trying  t 
keep  back  the  Atlantic  with  her  broom,  I  tried  to  keep  bac 
the  German  Ocean  with  my  pen.     Through  my  blank 
verse  Tragedy,  "The  War  God,"  produced  at  His  Ma. 
esty's  Theatre  by  Sir  Herbert  Tree  in  1911  (and  writte 
several  years  earlier),  humanity  was  invited  to  consider  tr 
rival  issues  raised  for  it  by  Bismarck  and  Tolstoy,  the  tw 
giant  protagonists  of  the  century,  the  War  for  the  Wor, 
beside  which   the  material   struggle  between  Alba   ar 
Gotha  for  the  mastery  of  the  planet  was  a  triviality.    Tl 
mysterious  assassination  of  this  play  in  the  heart  of  Londc 
in  broad  daylight  may  perhaps  be  counted,  like  the  i 
finitely  more  deplorable  murder  of  Jaures,   among   t 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      17 

earliest  casualties  in  the  cosmic  combat.  It  was  followed — 
soon  after  the  outburst  of  war — by  the  Foreign  Office 
prohibition  of  my  play  "  The  Melting  Pot  "  at  the  request 
of  Russia.  A  third  play  of  mine,  "  The  New  Religion,"  had 
already  been  prohibited  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain.  But 
these  evidences  of  England's  growing  passion  for  Prus- 
sianism  were  hardly  calculated  to  increase  my  liking  for  it. 

XIII 

Not  that  censorship  of  the  Stage  is  new — it  was  in  fact 
the  one  piece  of  Prussianism  left  like  a  fly  in  amber  in  the 
British  Constitution.  An  historian  remarks  that  in  Tudor 
days  the  dramatist  was  practically  outside  Magna  Charta, 
"  liable  to  instant  imprisonment  without  bail,  trial  or  ap- 
peal at  the  hands  of  the  stage  censor."  It  may  even  be 
admitted  that  the  institution  was  primarily  designed  not 
to  protect  morals  but  politicians  and  princes,  and  that  it 
was  the  politico-satirical  plays  of  Fielding  that  called  forth 
the  more  constitutional  Licensing  Act  of  1737.  A  dram- 
atist might  be  well  content  to  be  quashed  in  company  with 
the  author  of  Rule,  Britannia,  whose  historic  tragedy 
"  Edward  and  Eleonara  "  was  prohibited,  not  to  mention 
Shakespeare  (a  whole  act  of  whose  Richard  III  was  cut 
out  by  the  Master  of  the  Revels),  Middleton,  Massinger, 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher,  Steele,  Dryden,  Gay  and  the 
blameless  Miss  Mitford.  What  is  new  in  the  business, 
however,  is  the  re-inforcement  of  the  Lord  Chamberlain 
by  the  Foreign  Office;  an  innovation  which  seems  to  have 
begun  when  "  The  Mikado  "  was  so  ridiculously  interdicted 
to  please  Japan,  and  another  comic  opera,  "  Morocco 
Bound  "  was  modified  to  appease  the  susceptibilities  of  the 
Sultan  of  Turkey. 

That  because  Russia  is  in  alliance  with  us,  it  is  the  duty 


1 8  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

of  the  Foreign  Office  to  keep  her  uncriticized  may  seem  a 
plausible  contention.  But  on  examination  it  amounts 
not  only  to  interference  in  the  internal  affairs  of  England 
and  with  our  British  notions  of  liberty — and  that  he  can- 
not interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of  Russia  is  Sir  Edward 
Grey's  pet  shibboleth — but  it  also  identifies  the  State  with 
any  and  every  theatre.  Now  there  is  no  State  Theatre— 
I  wish  there  was,  even  at  the  risk  of  its  having  to  represent 
the  views  of  the  Foreign  Office.  But  to  suffer  from  the 
drawbacks  of  a  State  Theatre,  and  enjoy  none  of  the  ad- 
vantages of  its  existence,  is  an  intolerable  situation  for  the 
dramatist.  It  would  be  so  simple  for  the  Foreign  Office 
to  say  to  the  Russian  Ambassador:  "England,  you  may 
not  have  noticed,  is  a  land  of  liberty  and  the  theatres  are 
private  enterprises,  for  which  the  State  has  no  responsi- 
bility." An  astute  Foreign  Office  would  even  see  the  ad- 
vantage of  a  medium  for  conveying  hints  or  suggestions  tc 
foreign  countries  through  non-committal  channels.  Sc 
far,  however,  from  recognizing  and  exploiting  this  demo 
cratic  instrument,  the  Government  has  even  extended  th( 
censorship  to  newspapers,  thus  staking  England's  entir< 
fortunes  on  the  wisdom  of  the  official  view. 

Newspapers,  like  theatres,  have  a  certain  public  charac 
ter,  but  when,  as  I  understand  from  high  quarters,  the  De 
fence  of  the  Realm  Act  carries  over  even  into  the  purel; 
individual  realm  of  books,  our  liberties  are  indeed  in 
parlous  condition,  and  the  pages  I  have  been  compelle 
to  suppress  in  this  very  book  are  an  ominous  reminder  ( 
the  distance  we  have  travelled  from  the  doctrine  of  Milton 
Areopagiticus.1  They  are  moreover  an  interesting  illustn 

1  The  censorship  of  the  press  is  one  of  the  worst  losses  of  the  war.  T] 
notion  that  the  German  Staff  would  spend  its  days  and  nights  in  piecii 
together  d  la  Sherlock  Holmes  stray  items  in  odd  newspapers,  is  childis 
not  to  mention  the  possibility  that  would  then  arise  of  fooling  it  fatal] 
The  editorial  censorship,  whether  commercial  or  conscientious,  is  surely  b 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      19 

tion  of  the  central  thesis  of  this  book  that  there  is  neither 
truce  nor  standstill  in  the  war  for  the  world,  that  no  liberty 
is  so  old-established  as  to  be  safe,  and  that  what  our  an- 
cestors won  for  us  we  shall  not  necessarily  bequeath  to  our 
children. 

"Now  we  can  only  wait  for  the  day,  wait  and  apportion  our  shame, 

These  are  the  dykes  our  fathers  left,  but  we  would  not  look  to  the 
same. 

Time  and  again  were  we  warned  of  the  dykes,  time  and  again  we 
delayed; 

Now,  it  may  fall,  we  have  slain  our  sons  as  our  fathers  we  have  be- 
trayed." 

XIV 

Inter  arma  silent  leges.  Rome  in  war-time  surrendered 
herself  to  a  dictator.  It  is  disconcerting — but  it  may  be 
a  grim  necessity — that  our  war  for  the  freedom  of  the  world 
shall  mean — if  only  pro  tern — the  enslavement  of  England, 
the  sweeping  away  by  the  old  waste  of  waters  of  all  her 
secular  landmarks.  Burke  thought  that  the  politician  was 
a  wary  beast,  and  that  knowing  that  most  people  see — and 
see  only — what  happened  before  they  were  born,  he  would 
not — when  attempting  a  new  arbitrary  imposition — stamp 
upon  its  forehead  such  a  name  as  Ship-Money.  But  ship- 
money  could  be  imposed  to-day — nay,  is  imposed — as  easily 
as  anything  else.  "The  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act,  which 
ran  through  a  Radical  House  of  Commons  in  a  few  hours," 
says  the  Westminster  Gazette,  "made  an  end  of  Magna 
Charta,  and  scrapped  whole  centuries  of  our  history.  We 
have  neither  liberty  of  the  person,  nor  liberty  of  the  Press,1 

enough  without  the  Governmental  gag.  Even  our  ministers  are  astonished 
when  told  things  known  for  months  to  everybody  outside  the  ambit  of  our 
Press  Bureau,  a  state  of  things  that  might  produce  fatal  surprises. 

1  The  fining  of  the  Bystander  £200  for  a  comic  cartoon  will  be  an  historical 
index  of  war-mentality. 


20  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

nor  liberty  of  trade."  A  coil  of  passports,  regulations, 
ordinances  and  measures  impedes  life  and  ties  labor.  Our 
privacy  is  slit  open  by  the  postal  censor. 

Under  the  plea  Solus  reipublica  suprema  lex,  even  Habeas 
Corpus  is  gone — for  a  British-born  subject  may  be  im- 
prisoned without  reason  given  or  without  trial.  We  have 
lived  to  see  military  and  industrial  conscription,  accom- 
panied by  a  "  petty  Prussianism"  which  has  disgusted  even 
conscriptionist  organs,  secret  trials  before  illegally  minded 
officials,  executions  of  unnamed  persons  for  unknown  of- 
fences, some  of  them  soldier  lads  under  twenty,  intern- 
ment of  thousands  of  able-bodied  aliens  (some  of  them  ever 
seized  with  a  high  hand  upon  the  high  seas  when  they  wen 
deserting  their  fatherlands),  winding  up  of  enemy  companies 
and  ruthless  sentences  for  purely  technical  offences  pro 
nounced  by  panic-stricken  magistrates,  whose  obiter  dicU 
occasionally  reveal  a  childishness  beyond  words. 

Thus  a  commercial  traveller,  a  British  subject,  was  no 
allowed  to  return  to  his  American  home  on  the  ground  tha 
the  goods  he  represented  ought  to  have  been  made  in  Eng 
land.     A  German-speaking  witness  was  told  to  learn 
language  worth  speaking. 

This  Prussianism  pro  tern  has  only  been  made  possible  b 
the  device  of  a  Coalition  Government,  for  this  is  not,  as 
pretends,  a  union  of  all  the  talents — that,  as  Herbe 
Spencer  pointed  out  half  a  century  ago,  could  be  bett 
secured  by  utilizing  the  best  business  men — but  a  shie 
against  criticism  and  a  cover  for  blunders.  As  Lord  Lor 
burn  said  so  excellently  in  the  House  of  Lords,  a  parli 
mentary  danger  relieved,  is  not  a  national  danger  relieve 
The  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act  is  in  fact  a  Defence  of  t 
Cabinet  Act.  The  rapidity  with  which  war  reverses  gen< 
ations  of  history  is  only  another  proof  of  its  degenerati 
character — war  is  perhaps  really  the  test  of  a  people,  r 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      21 

of  their  brute  strength  but  of  whether  their  constitution  is 
a  reality  alive  in  their  spirit  or  a  mere  dead  heritage.  Of 
course  all  the  other  belligerents  have  slid  back  as  swiftly 
as  Britain,  but  corruptio  optimi  pessima.  It  does  not 
seem  to  occur  to  anybody  that  a  great  nation  must  take  a 
little  risk  for  a  great  principle. 

XV 

Nor  can  the  Government  be  accused  of  not  representing 
the  people,  for  the  mob  has  bettered  the  Government 
oblawas  (or  alien  drives)  by  pogroms  (attacks  on  property 
though  happily  free  from  murder)  and  it  clamors  for  still 
more  internments  (regardless  of  the  expense,  and  of  the 
waste  of  labor-force),  still  more  high-handed  hampering 
of  neutrals,  and  for  non-recognition  of  naturalization 
scraps  of  paper.  Lloyds  and  the  Baltic  Exchange  suspend 
members,  Shipping  Companies  refuse  to  embark  emigrants. 
Town-Councillors  remove  the  name  of  the  German  maker 
from  the  dial  of  the  parish  clock  and — with  a  still  more 
comical  desire  to  put  back  the  clock  of  civilization — a 
Mr.  Herbert  Stephen  writes  to  the  Times  that  it  would  be 
"exceedingly  disagreeable  to  have  the  same  time  here  as  in 
Germany  1"  How  truly  observes  Romain  Rolland,  "  Un 
grand  peuple  assailli  par  la  guerre  n'a  pas  seulement  ses 
frontieres  a  defendre  il  a  aussi  sa  raison."  Even  scholars 
rush  to  run  down  the  German  Science  they  have  always 
profited  by,  and  learned  bodies  hasten  to  remove  their 
German  members.  Anti-German  Leagues  break  up  Quaker 
meetings,  disturbing  the  immemorial  Elian  quiet.  Even  in 
Parliament  a  military  member  back  from  the  trenches  was 
allowed  to  declare  without  rebuke  from  the  Speaker  that  if 
he  had  had  another  honorable  member  in  his  battalion  at 
the  front,  that  gentleman  would  have  been  strung  up  by  the 


22  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

thumbs  before  he  had  been  there  half  an  hour!  There 
could  not  be  a  more  salutary  illustration  of  Burke's  axiom 
that  "the  civil  power,  like  every  other  that  calls  in  the 
aid  of  an  ally  stronger  than  itelf,  perishes  by  the  assistance 
it  receives." 

Such  things  at  home  do  not  tend  to  put  an  allegation 
like  the  Baralong  episode  at  sea  beyond  the  need  of  formal 
disproof  by  the  Admiralty.  Undoubtedly  the  pitilessness 
of  Prussianism  is  responsible  for  much  of  this  debacle  of 
Britishism, — that  is  how  evil  engenders  evil.  But  unless 
these  phenomena  prove — as  we  must  hope  they  will  prove — 
the  mere  mania  of  war-fever,  to  be  dispelled  by  the  first 
cool  touch  of  Peace,  Germany — even  if  we  pulverize  her— 
will  have  destroyed  the  Britain  we  knew 

"A  land  of  settled  Government, 
A  land  of  old  and  just  renown 
Where  Freedom  broadens  slowly  down 
From  precedent  to  precedent." 

One  wonders  indeed  whether  Tennyson  would  have  carrie 
out  his  threat  to  leave  such  an  England 

"Should  banded  unions  persecute 
Opinion,  and  induce  a  time 
When  single  thought  is  civil  crime 
And  individual  freedom  mute." 

How  odd  that  it  is  from  a  member  of  Mr.  Asquith's  co: 
stricted  House  of  Lords  that  comes  the  stately  remind 
of  Britain's  real  greatness  as  the  pioneer  of  freedom.1  Ai 
how  pathetically  reads  the  letter  2  of  the  veteran  Liben 
Sir  Edward  Fry,  on  the  murder  of  Magna  Charta!  "T 
shock  that  I  have  received  from  the  judgment  of  Sir  E 

1  Lord  Parmoor's  Letter  to  the  Times,  March  i,  1916. 

2  The  Times,  February  25,  1916. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      23 

ward  Halliday  has  made  some  words  of  the  ancient  docu- 
ment resound  continually  in  my  ears." 

The  late  Emil  Reich,  whose  clairvoyance  of  the  coming 
war  was  so  marvellous,  seems  yet  to  have  been  mistaken  in 
thinking  that  in  the  hour  of  crisis,  free  England  would  re- 
veal great  personalities  as  opposed  to  the  mechanical  medi- 
ocrities of  "the  model  monster."  We  have  had  as  yet 
only  the  mediocrities  without  even  the  mechanical  perfec- 
tion. The  cry  "  Nothing  matters,  unless  we  win  the  war" 
reveals  rather  the  temper  of  a  lady  throwing  her  bonnet 
over  the  mills  than  of  a  great  historic  nation  with  its  thou- 
sand years  of  heroic  vicissitude. 

The  pity  is  all  the  more  because  of  the  greatness  Britain 
at  war  has  shown  in  so  many  directions — in  the  boundless- 
ness of  her  effort  and  her  sacrifice,  the  nobility  of  her  young 
men,  her  generosity  towards  Belgium,  and  the  spiritual 
gravitation  she  has  exercised  upon  her  remotest  Colonies 
and  Dependencies.  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  has  written  a 
characteristic  book,  called  more  suo  The  Crimes  of  Eng- 
land, the  point  of  which  is,  I  gather,  that  this  is  the  first 
war  in  which  England  has  been  in  the  right.  That  is  further 
than  even  Coleridge  (who  once  cursed  his  country)  or 
Cowper  (who  bade  her  cease  to  "  grind  India  ")  or  Words- 
worth (on  whom  the  freight  of  her  offences  lay  heavy) 
has  ever  gone.  But  if  Mr.  Chesterton  is  correct — and  the 
crimes  of  Chesterton  are  many — it  is  certainly  odd  that  the 
first  war  in  which  England  has  been  in  the  right  should 
be  the  one  war  in  which  she  has  temporarily  ceased  to 
exist. 

"Who  lives  if  England  dies?"  asked  Kipling  finely.  But 
England  does  not  live  if  her  mere  geographical  semblance 
survives.  One  is  reminded  of  the  words  Tacitus  put  into 
the  mouth  of  Otho.  "Quid?  l  vos  pulcherrimam  hanc  ur- 

1  Historic,  Book  I,  Cap.  84. 


24  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

bem  domibus  et  tectis  et  congestu  lapidum  stare  creditis? 
Muta  ista  et  inanima  intercidere  ac  reparari  promiscua 
sunt:  aeternitas  rerum  et  pax  gentium  et  mea  cum  vestra 
salus  incolumitate  senatus  firmatur.  Hunc  auspicate  a 
parente  et  conditore  urbis  nostrae  institutum,  et  a  regibus 
usque  ad  principes  continuum  et  immortalem,  sicut  a  ma- 
joribus  accepimus,  sic  posteris  tradamus.  Nam  ut  vobis 
senatores,  ita  ex  senatoribus  principes  nascuntur." 

"No  more  speeches!"  cried  Lord  Glenconner,  and  spoke 
England's  mood  of  the  moment.     That  the  first  duty  oJ 
Parliament  is  to  parler,  and  not  to  fight  in  the  trenches 
that  action  cannot  supersede  counsel,  and  that  a  brusque 
soldierly  "let  us  get  on  with  the  war"  does  not  help  us  t( 
win  it,  and  that  the  dignity  of  a  great  nation  requires  it  t< 
go  its  way  with  imperturbable  majesty,  was  an  opinion  I  wa 
at  first  alone  in  expressing.    My  speech  "Wake  up,  Parlia 
ment,"  republished  in  this  volume,  was  regarded  by  som 
as  scandalous,  if  not  indeed  treasonable.    But  I  soon  live* 
to  see  its  point  of  view  adopted  by  the  Times,  which  ha< 
welcomed  the  dumbness  of  Westminster  as  a  symptom  c 
national  unity,  but  which  speedily  perceived  that  Parlfc 
ment  is  never  more  necessary  than  in  a  great  war  whos 
duration  is  uncertain,  nay,  which  found  itself  compelled  t 
be  the  missing  voice  of  the  nation — a  service  I  recogrm 
as  beyond  price,  much  as  I  may  disagree  with  particuk 
things  said  by  the  voice.    Parliament  itself  has  never  r 
covered  its  potency.     Paralyzed  by  the  device  of  a  no] 
party  Ministry,  devoid  constitutionally  of  the  power  ov 
foreign  affairs  possessed  by  many  other  Parliaments,  whic 
form  Committees  entitled  to  call  for  papers  and  cros 
examine  Ministers,  hectored  over  by  the  Zabernian  rhe 
oric  of  M.  P.'s  from  the  front,  menaced  by  the  hyster 
of  the  constituencies  as  well  as  hypnotized  by  its  ow 
flinging  away  money  by  the  thousand  millions  witho 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      25 

question  or  criticism,1  abandoning  the  control  of  the  purse 
for  which  it  was  recently  waging  war  with  the  House  of 
Lords,  the  House  of  Commons  has  presented  a  pitiable 
spectacle,  ironically  enhanced  by  the  armlets  sported  by 
some  of  the  members.  The  degradation  reached  its  climax 
in  the  conscription  comedy,  preluded  by  the  farcical  fraud 
of  the  National  Register. 

A  hireling  army  is  no  ideal  of  mine.  "Despicable"  I 
wrote  years  ago  "is  the  nation  which  sends  mercenaries 
to  do  its  fighting."  2  A  citizen  army  is  the  only  militarism 
the  future  can  tolerate,  and  the  rough-and-ready  methods 
of  voluntary  enlistment,  in  a  nation  without  the  tradition 
of  national  service,  indubitably  worked  injustice,  as  by  the 
patriotic  rush  of  "only  sons"  whom  conscription  would 
have  passed  by. 

But  for  a  great  nation  to  swop  its  national  system  in  the 
middle  of  a  war,  to  introduce  conscription  on  the  basis  of  a 
wager  whether  a  certain  number  of  single  men  would  vol- 
unteer or  not — and  then  not  even  to  take  the  number  of 
the  single  men  as  they  enlisted,  but  to  proceed  entirely  upon 
guesswork, — an  ethic  that  would  have  scandalized  Crock- 
ford's  gaming  club — and  subsequently  to  try  to  justify  the 
guess  by  hustling  into  the  army  "everything  on  two  legs" 
(even  on  cork  legs)  and  "uns tarring"  the  "starred"  young 
men  already  supposed  to  be  allowed  for  in  the  "  statistics"- 
all  this  is  more  like  Mexico  or  a  lunatic  ward  than  Tenny- 
son's stately  old  island.  The  notion  that  it  is  quantity, 
quantity,  quantity  that  matters  has  long  amazed  all  of  us 
who  play  chess  and  are  accustomed  to  see  Kings  beaten  in 
the  very  thick  of  their  men.  No  wonder  the  Southwark 

1  In  the  debate  on  Mr.  McKenna's  last  Budget,  the  greatest  in  our  history, 
one  speaker  "complained  there  had  hardly  been  a  quorum  present  through- 
out." (Times,  April  6,  1916.) 

1  Italian  Fantasies.    Risorgimento. 


26  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

Tribunal  exempted  pro  tern  the  one  man  in  all  England 
able  to  fit  padded  rooms  in  asylums. 

My  sympathy  with  Sir  John  Simon  is,  however,  dimin- 
ished by  the  fact  that  he  let  pass  without  a  word — such  is 
the  slackness  of  even  the  best  of  Parliamentarians  now- 
adays— the  real  introduction  of  conscription.  That  oc- 
curred when  the  time-expired  soldiers  and  marines  had  their 
term  of  service  compulsorily  extended.  But  that  the 
London  Clubs  should  have  considered  Sir  John  Simon's 
noble  sacrifice  of  his  political  position  a  symptom  of  dubi- 
ous sanity  throws  a  significant  light  upon  the  spirit  of  our 
fight  for  Liberty. 

Beholding  thus  how 

"  Freedom  narrows  swiftly1  down 
From  precedent  to  precedent." 

I  ask  myself  whether  the  vaunted  resolution  of  Britom 
never  to  be  slaves  is  only  an  old  song.  If  so  over  the  British 
Empire  may  be  written  Ichabod.  For  its  greatness  is  in 
separably  bound  up  with  its  freedom.  The  attempt  to  rur 
the  British  Empire  without  Britishism  is  suicidal. 

An  Australian  (M.  F.  W.  Eggleston  of  Melbourne)  pu 
the  truth  strongly  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Nation  whej 
he  wrote: 

"But  above  all  material  ties,  above  all  ties  based  upon  con 
mon  danger  or  common  interest,  the  factor  which  plays  tt 
greatest  part  in  holding  the  Empire  together  is  the  spiritu; 
leadership  of  the  world  by  Great  Britain.  It  is  Britain — tl 
cradle  of  freedom  and  modern  democracy,  the  mother  of  Parli; 
ments,  the  most  successful  exponent  of  the  principles  of  r 

1  Swiftly  not  slowly.  Facilis  descensus.  As  Remain  Holland  says:  "Da 
la  lutte  £ternelle  entre  le  mal  et  le  bien,  la  partie  n'est  pas  6gale:  il  tant  i 
sidcle  pour  construire,  cequ'un  jour  suffit  a  detruire." 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      27 

sponsible  representative  Government — who  attracts  the  imagi- 
nation and  secures  the  passionate  devotion  of  a  young  democracy 
like  Australia.  If  weak  and  trembling  hands  let  fall  this  sceptre, 
then  the  days  of  the  Empire  as  a  powerful,  united,  positive 
force  in  the  world  are  numbered." 

Sharing  his  advantage  of  seeing  the  Empire  at  a  non- 
parochial  angle,  I  have  often  striven  to  bring  home  the  same 
truth  to  my  fellow-citizens.  Speaking  when  Edward  VII. 
succeeded  to  it — exactly  a  thousand  years  after  Edward  I. — 
I  said: 1 

"If  you  were  as  much  in  contact  with  foreign  opinion  as  I 
am,  if  you  knew  how  the  thought  of  England  lives  and  glows 
in  the  hearts  of  the  oppressed — as  the  sun  of  liberty,  the  ark  of 
refuge — then  you  would  be  more  careful  than  you  are  to  keep 
this  great  vision,  this  splendid  ideal,  untarnished,  even  by  for- 
eign misconceptions  and  alien  misunderstandings.  Caesar's 
Empire — as  well  as  Caesar's  wife — must  be  above  suspicion." 

But  why  cite  Mr.  Eggleston  and  myself,  when  there  is 
Plato? 

"Now  there  is  a  voice  from  each  form  of  polity,  as  it  were 
from  certain  animals;  one  from  a  democracy,  another  from  an 
oligarchy,  and  another  from  a  monarchy.  .  .  .  Whichever 
then  of  these  polities  speaks  with  its  own  voice,  both  to  gods 
and  men,  and  produces  actions,  correspondent  to  its  voice,  it 
flourishes  ever,  and  is  preserved;  but  when  it  imitates  another 
voice,  it  is  destroyed." 

For  which  reason,  if  for  no  other,  I  trust  that  after  the 
war,  despite  our  pro-German  press,  the  British  Constitu- 
tion will  be  thoroughly  repaired  and  re-painted. 

1  The  occasion  was  a  dinner  to  Mr.  Linley  Sambourne  of  Punch  over  which 
I  was  presiding. 


28  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

XVI 

Much  of  this  obscurantist  activity  on  the  part  of  our 
Press  Bureau  and  our  Press  has  been  devoted  to  maintaining 
the  mirage  of  "Rosy  Russia,"  and  our  men  of  letters  with 
whom  I  had  co-operated  in  signing  a  manifesto  against 
Germany  declaring  that  we  in  Great  Britain  were  "  conscious 
of  a  destiny  and  a  duty  ...  to  maintain  the  free  and  law- 
abiding  ideals  of  Western  Europe"  signed  behind  my  back 
another  manifesto — to  Russia — calculated  to  give  fresh 
rosiness  to  the  myth.  I  was  glad  to  note  that  the  author 
of  The  Truce  of  the  Bear  was  not  among  the  signatories. 

Russia,  across  whose  vast  steppes  the  war  for  the  world 
now  rages  both  spiritually  and  physically,  and  which  i< 
fighting  with  equal  heroism  and  nobility  in  both  zones,  L 
unquestionably  a  splendid  potentiality  in  which  lie  laten' 
one  of  the  great  countries  and  peoples  of  the  future,  des 
tined  to  enrich  humanity  in  every  department.     But  a 
present  it  is  only  a  giant  embryo,  whose  very  calendar  lag 
symbolically  behind.     According  to  its  best  friends  it  i 
at  present  a  Continent  of  an  alphabetic1  if  lovable  moujiks- 
140  to  150  million  spread  over  three  Europes — who  a] 
though  piously  Christian  are  practically  pagan  in  thei 
superstitions  and  primeval  earth-rites. 2   They  are  environe 
by  a  torpid  and  degraded  Church 3  which  has  not  ye 
reached  the  stage  of  relating  religion  to  life  but  is  a  Churc 
of  Prayer  and  Praise.    So  ignorant  are  the  remoter  membe] 
of  this  vast  peasantry  that  according  to  an  Englishwoma 
well  acquainted  with  Russia  4  some  of  our  allies  in  the  pre 

1  Seventy-five  per  cent  cannot  read  or  write,  according  to  a  letter  in  ti 
Times  (January  3,  1916). 

2  See  Times'  Russian  Supplement  (February  24,  1916). 

8  See  Dr.  Sarolea,  also  a  Russian  Countess  in  the  Daily  Chronicle,  int< 
viewed  by  Harold  Begbie. 

4  Mrs.  Rosa  Newmarch  in  the  Times,  January  4,  1916. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      29 

ent  war  had  never  heard  of  the  English  at  all,  or  at  best  con- 
fused them  with  the  French.  Nay,  they  did  not  even  know 
all  their  own  forty-eight  races,  for  another  recent  writer  on 
Russia  tells  us  that  a  group  from  far  Siberia  arriving  at 
Warsaw,  after  days  in  the  train,  and  seeing  people  of  other 
traits  and  vestures,  asked  of  their  officers,  "can  we  begin 
killing  now?"1 

This  backbone  of  Russia  is  supplemented  (according  to 
these  same  friendly  authorities)  by  a  miseducated,  loose- 
living  and  misleading  minority  of  doctrinaire  revolution- 
aries out  of  touch  with  the  real  Russian  people,  which  its 
shallowness  wishes  to  endow  with  Western  representative 
institutions,  and  by  a  growing  industrial  element  which, 
to  believe  Stephen  Graham,  is  the  worst  type  of  humanity 
that  has  ever  afflicted  the  planet,  "crass,  heavy,  ugly,  un- 
faithful, unclean,  impure,"  2  and  which  is  the  only  element 
in  which  political  unrest  really  exists. 

There  is  also  in  the  Baltic  provinces  a  considerable  Ger- 
man-speaking population  that  combines  with  the  bureau- 
cratic ruling  elements,  which  are  in  sympathy  with  Prussian 
rigidity,  to  constitute  a  large  pro-German  factor.  Nor  are 
Germans  the  only  exotic  stock.  Of  the  forty-eight  races  in 
Russia  only  two-thirds,  roughly  speaking,  are  Russians 
proper,  or  Orthodox  Christians.  No  less  than  thirty  per 
cent,  including  nearly  twenty  million  Mohammedans,  are 
of  other  sects  or  faiths.  England,  faced  in  India,  with  a 
similar  problem,  has  boldly  solved  it  by  a  policy  of  equal 
justice  for  all  faiths  and  races,  and  the  loyalty  of  the  Inciian 
troops  is  her  reward.  Russia — and  the  ideal  of  Pobiedon- 
ostseff  is  applauded  by  Mr.  Stephen  Graham — seeks  rather 
the  unity  of  the  strait  waistcoat  and  the  Procrustean  bed. 
These  motley  races  and  creeds  are  to  be  adjusted  to  a  Slavo- 

1  Russia,  the  Balkans,  and  the  Dardanelles.    (Granville  Fortescue.) 

2  Changing  Russia,  by  Stephen  Graham. 


30  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS   AND   A   PREFACE 

phil  system  of  which  the  three  principles  are:  Samoderjavie 
(Autocracy),  Pravoslavie  (Orthodoxy),  Narodnost  (nation- 
ality).1 And  the  reactionary  organs  inspired  by  the  Ste- 
phen Graham  propaganda  tell  us  that  for  the  Russian 
Jews  to  demand  rights  from  "a  system  created  by  a  Chris- 
tian State  for  its  own  protection"2  is  "to  treat  with  con- 
tempt the  realities  of  an  Empire  whose  political  institu- 
tions and  intelligence  are  still  in  embryo."  3  To  which 
I  can  imagine  the  shade  of  a  Russian  Jew  replying: 

"  Perhaps  it  was  right  to  make  life  such  a  hell, 
But  why  did  you  murder  me  too?  " 

XVII 

An  alliance  with  an  Empire  of  such  rudimentary  "in- 
stitutions and  intelligence" — in  which  France  had  the  dis- 
honor of  leading  the  way — could  not  fail — however  neces- 
sary to  safety — to  radiate  maleficent  influences  even  wher 
it  was  an  entente.    M.  Kulmazin,  President  of  the  Counci 
of  the  Empire,  calls  it  "a  humanitarian  alliance,"  a  de 
scription  on  which  more  than  one  page  of  this  book  is  j 
sufficient  commentary,  not  to  mention  the  many  docu 
ments   in   my    possession    which    must    remain    unpub 
lished  till  the  censorship  is  relaxed.    It  is  only  fair  to  sa> 
however,  that  some  of  these  documents  themselves  dem 
onstrate  how  powerless  is  even  the  civil  bureaucracy  be 
fore  the  military,  so  that,  by  analogy  and  comparativel) 
Russia  may  not  be  so  much  more  under  the  mailed  fis 
than  ourselves.     Indeed,  I  have  arrived  at  a  most  con 
fortable  conclusion.    In  the  first  place  now  that  we  are  on 
level  with  Russia,  knowing  exactly  what  it  means  not  t 

1  See  that  often  excellent  book,  Europe's  Debt  to  Russia,  by  Dr.  Sarolea, 
writer,  however,  who  does  not  halt  between  two  opinions  but  expresses  bo 
on  different  pages;  doubtless  through  the  necessity  of  living  up  to  his  tit1 

2  Morning  Post. 

8  Pall  Mall  Gazette,  February  27,  1915. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      31 

enter  or  leave  our  own  country  without  a  coil  of  passports 
and  delays,  and  police  inquisitions,1  and  to  be  hampered 
day  and  night  by  military  regulations — for  of  course  our 
war  regime  is  Russia's  peace  regime — the  union  seems  much 
less  unnatural.  And  in  the  second  place  my  former  fear 
that  like  a  matrimonial  misalliance  it  would  drag  us  down, 
that  the  British  bureaucratic  tiger  having  tasted  blood 
would  have  no  relish  to  return  to  his  pre-war  menu,  has  been 
dispelled.  For  if  we  are  old  and  tired,  disappointed  of 
democracy  and  blase  in  freedom,  Russia  comes  to  the  eternal 
quest  of  liberty  with  a  young  hope,  an  unjaded  enthusiasm, 
a  burning  thirst  and  an  idyllic  inexperience.  Thus  it  is  Russia 

1 A  Russian  friend  domiciled  in  England  tells  me,  however,  that  our  police 
are  too  gentlemanly  to  be  efficient.  Certainly  the  notorious  Fatherland  of 
New  York,  hurled  at  me  every  week  from  New  York  in  an  envelope,  is  almost 
the  only  American  letter  to  me  that  is  never  censored.  In  the  Dallas  scandal 
at  the  Home  Office  we  had,  however,  a  foretaste  of  what  happens  in  a  bu- 
reaucratic country,  and  if  we  really  settle  down  to  Russianism,  no  doubt  a 
double  language  will  be  invented  by  journalists  and  the  public  generally  to 
baffle  the  censorship.  Thus  a  Russian  lady  wishing  to  make  me  acquainted 
with  what  was  happening  to  the  Jews  of  Russia  behind  the  official  veil  wrote 
me  a  long  allegorical  letter  about  the  misfortunes  of  my  "poor  relatives," 
while  another  informed  me  she  was  studying  certain  Bible  texts  on  which  she 
desired  my  views  viz.,  Jer.  XIV,  17,  Gen.  IV,  14,  Jer.  XIII,  19,  20,  Isa.  LII, 
3,  Jer.  XIII,  15-17,  Esth.  IV,  14,  Lev.  XIX,  17,  Amos  I,  9.  I  give  here  the 
first  four  put  together  as  she  designed.  For  confirmation  see  article  herein  on 
The  Jewish  Factor  in  the  War. 

Jer.  XIV,  17. — And  thou  shalt  say  this  word  unto  them;  let  mine  eyes  run 
down  with  tears  night  and  day,  and  let  them  not  cease:  for  the  virgin  daugh- 
ter of  my  people  is  broken  with  a  great  breach,  with  a  very  grievous  wound. 

Gen.  IV,  14. — Behold,  thou  hast  driven  me  out  this  day  from  the  face  of 
the  earth,  and  from  thy  face  shall  I  be  hid;  and  I  shall  be  a  fugitive  and  a 
wanderer  in  the  earth;  and  it  shall  come  to  pass,  that  every  one  that  findeth 
me  shall  slay  me. 

Jer.  XIII,  19-20. — The  cities  of  the  south  are  shut  up,  and  there  is  none 
to  open  them:  Judah  is  carried  away  captive  all  of  it,  it  is  wholly  carried  away 
captive.  Lift  up  your  eyes  and  behold  them  that  come  from  the  north: 
where  is  the  flock  that  was  given  thee,  thy  beautiful  flock? 

Isa.  LII,  3. — For  thus  saith  the  Lord:  Ye  were  sold  for  nought;  and  not 
by  money  shall  ye  be  redeemed. 


32  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS   AND   A   PREFACE 

that  will  drag  us  up  and  in  the  ardor  of  the  ever-developing 
Duma  our  faded  Parliament  will  renew  its  youth.1 

XVIII 

In  so  far  as  it  deals  with  Russia,  "The  Melting  Pot"  is 
on  historic  ground.  The  pogrom  at  Kishineff  in  1904  has 
already  a  whole  literature  devoted  to  it,  and  the  notion  that 
foreign  history  can  be  hushed  up  in  any  particular  country 
when  the  political  conditions  demand,  opens  up  a  geograph- 
ical conception  of  history  which  transcends  even  Pascal's 
famous  "  Verite  au  deqd  des  Pyrenees,  erreur  au  deld."  But 
the  moral  of  the  play  is  not  anti-Russian  at  all  as  was  ex- 
cellently pointed  out  by  my  brother  novelist  (and  novelist 
brother),  Mr.  Louis  Zangwill,  in  a  letter  to  the  Daify 
Chronicle,  whose  interviewer  had  misrepresented  his  views 

"Although  the  dramatic  action  of  the  play  was  based  on  * 
Russian  pogrom  against  the  Jews,  it  yet  raises  the  question 
'Could  Jew  and  Russian,  though  separated  by  the  widest  gaj 
conceivable,  nevertheless  come  together  spiritually  througl 
the  healing  power  of  a  higher  ideal  of  humanity?'  And  th 
play  answers  distinctly,  emphatically,  'Yes!' 

"As  I  pointed  out  to  your  representative,  the  play  is  thu 
symbolic,  and  foreshadows  the  future  rapprochement  betwee 
the  Russian  and  the  Jewish  peoples.  The  contrast  between  th 
narrow  fanaticism  of  the  bureaucratic  old  Russia  and  th 
idealistic  aspirations  of  the  new  young  Russia  is  clearly  an 
sharply  drawn,  but  it  is  obviously  impossible  to  draw  such 
contrast  without  dwelling  equally  on  the  two  factors  to  i 
though  one  of  these,  never  meant  to  be  viewed  alone,  may  1m 
displeased  the  Foreign  Office.  It  is  therefore  open  to  questic 
whether  the  Foreign  Office  has  really  exercised  a  wise  judgmei 

1 1  had  hardly  written  these  words  when  I  read  of  an  interview  wi 
M.  Rodzianko,  the  President  of  the  Duma,  in  which  he — a  Conservative- 
reported  as  saying:  "After  this  war  you  could  no  more  stop  free  speech  th; 
a  dam  could  hold  the  winter  floods  when  Spring  comes.  Yes,  after  this  w 
it  will  be  in  Russia  like  the  Spring."  (Daily  Chronicle,  February  29,  IQK 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      33 

in  the  matter.  Personally,  if  I  may  express  an  opinion  of  my 
own,  I  am  certain  that  the  whole  Jewish  people,  especially  in 
view  of  the  Russian  alliance  with  England,  would  gladly  wipe 
the  past  out  of  their  minds  in  the  appreciation  of  the  significance 
of  a  new,  free,  and  regenerated  Russia." 

Nor,  though  incidentally  offensive  to  the  "Black  Hun- 
dreds" is  the  play  concerned  with  Russia  except  as  a  place 
to  escape  from.  Its  theme  is  America,  with  its  fusion  of 
races  under  a  new  human  ideal,  an  ideal  whose  illumination 
was  never  more  necessary  than  at  this  Cimmerian  moment, 
and  this  makes  the  subservience  of  the  Foreign  Office  to 
the  Russian  Bureaucracy  a  double  treason  against  human- 
ity. For  what  had  prompted  me  to  write  the  play  was  the 
consciousness  that  the  War  for  the  World  had  shifted  to  a 
new  battle-zone,  and  that  in  America — to  use  the  great 
words  of  Abraham  Lincoln — "we  shall  nobly  save  or 
meanly  lose  the  last  great  hope  of  earth." 

Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton,  for  whom  "the  last  great  hope  of 
earth"  lies  in  the  rear,  in  criticising  the  "Melting  Pot's" 
ideal  of  looking  forward  and  of  accentuating  "The  God  of 
our  Children"  rather  than  "The  God  of  our  Fathers," 
remarked  that  this  is  "Nonsense,  nonsense,  nonsense"- 
an  iteration  that  lacks  only  the  damnable — because  the 
past  is  unchangeably  fixed  and  known,  and  the  future  un- 
known and  unknowable.  (I  regret  I  cannot  remember  his 
exact  words,  always  excepting  his  triple  "nonsense.") 
But  the  past  is  not  really  known,1  nor  is  the  past  unchange- 

1  As  Faust  puts  it, 

"  Mein  Freund,  die  Zeiten  der  Vergangenheit 
Sind  uns  ein  Buch  mit  sieben  Siegeln 
Was  ihr  den  geist  der  Zeiten  heisst 
Das  ist  im  grund  der  Herren  eigner  geist 
In  dem  die  Zeiten  sich  bespiegeln." 

In  the  simpler  language  of  Voltaire,  ancient  history  is  only  "  des  fables 
convenues."     See  his  tale  "Jeannot  et  Colin." 


34  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

able.  This  paradox  I  am  sure  will  commend  me  to  Mr. 
Chesterton's  heart  but  it  rests  on  the  simple  fact  that  you 
can  alter  your  relation  to  the  past  and  therefore  alter  the 
proportion  the  past  bears  in  the  totality  of  your  history. 
For  instance,  1914  will  be  either  the  blackest  year  in  human 
history,  or  the  beginning  of  a  new  and  happier  era,  accord- 
ing to  what  we  make  of  it.  The  past  in  fact  remains  as  a 
series  of  half-dead  seeds,  any  of  which  may  be  revived  by  a 
changed  relation  to  it.  Nor  does  the  unknowability  of  the 
future — which  is  at  worst  merely  partial — prevent  our  trying 
to  mould  it  to  an  ideal  pattern  conceived  in  our  conscious- 
ness. This  is  in  fact  what  every  reformer  is  doing  all  the 
time. 

XIX 

Lest  the  superior  person,  lifting  an  eye-brow  at  my  ad- 
miration for  America,  dismiss  me  as  a  belated  doctrinaire 
democrat,  let  me  remark  that  I  have  always  denned  my- 
self as  "a  democrat  with  a  profound  mistrust  of  the  people." 
The  tyranny  of  majorities  is  worse  than  the  majority  of 
tyrannies.  Democracy,  like  so  many  human  arrangements, 
is  simply  the  least  bad  of  all  the  alternatives,  and  it  con- 
tains within  itself — as  no  other  form  of  Government  does — 
its  own  antidote.1  Sully  has  observed — and  Burke  has 
endorsed  the  observation — that  the  people  never  rise 
from  any  instinct  of  rebellion  but  from  mere  impatience  of 
its  sufferings.  And  democracy,  tempered  by  Tammany, 
is  better  than  autocracy  tempered  by  assassination.  Even 
so  great  a  thinker  as  Kant,  groping  for  a  Philosophy  of 

1  An  Italian  book,  by  a  Professor  of  Political  Economy  at  Basle  has  been 
published  pretending  to  expose  democracy,  on  the  ground  the  leaders  always 
become  autocrats  and  bureaucrats.  But  I  have  long  ago  said  that  it  is 
"disguised  aristocracy" — only  it  is  an  elected  and  removable  chosen  aristoc- 
racy— and  this  makes  all  the  difference. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      35 

History,  looked  upon  the  American  Constitution  as  a  for- 
ward step  in  human  history,  and  John  Bright  said  in  one  of 
his  eloquent  perorations: — 

"It  may  be  a  vision  but  I  will  cherish  it.  I  see  one  vast  con- 
federation stretching  from  the  frozen  North  hi  unbroken  line 
to  the  glowing  South,  and  from  the  wild  billows  of  the  Atlantic 
Westward  to  the  calmer  waters  of  the  Pacific  main — and  I 
see  one  people,  and  one  language  and  one  law,  and  one  faith, 
and  over  all  that  wide  continent,  the  home  of  freedom, 
and  a  refuge  for  the  oppressed  of  every  race  and  of  every 
clime." 

The  vision,  like  so  many  poetic  visions,  failed  to  take  ac- 
count of  all  the  facts — notably  of  the  black  problem  that 
literally  darkens  the  picture,  and  of  the  financial  magnates 
living  like  mediaeval  robber-barons,  each  in  his  turreted 
Trust.  But  even  Bryce,  the  sober  student  of  The  Ameri- 
can Commonwealth  writes  of  it  in  the  closing  chapter  of 
his  classical  work  as  "  the  latest  experiment  which  mankind 
have  tried  and  the  last  which  they  can  ever  hope  to  try 
under  equally  favorable  conditions." 

In  fact  the  "War  for  the  World"— that  eternal  duel  of 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  of  Good  and  Evil — stands  in  America 
at  one  of  its  most  critical  moments,  since  our  planet  was 
launched  upon  its  mystic  adventure.  Here  is  the  forefront 
of  the  battle,  the  first  line  of  trenches,  always  in  danger  of 
being  re- taken. 

XX 

Long  before  the  "Melting  Pot"  tried  to  bring  home  to 
America  by  a  vivid  image  of  her  manifest  mission  that  she 
carried  humanity  and  its  fortunes,  I  had  published  in  the 
closing  days  of  the  nineteenth  century — at  the  invitation 


36  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

of  a  great  American  organ — a  forecast  of  the  forces  of 
reaction  against  which  she  would  have  to  struggle  in  the 
new  century. 

"The  twentieth  century,"  I  wrote,  "will  be  America's  critical 
century.  Will  she  develop  on  the  clear  lines  laid  down  by  her 
great  founders,  or  will  she  survive,  like  most  human  institutions, 
as  a  caricature  and  contradiction  of  the  ideals  of  her  creators? 
Will  she  fall  back  into  outworn  feudalisms,  accepting  second- 
hand ideals  from  the  Europe  she  has  outgrown?  Small  as  is 
the  significance  of  aristocracy  in  the  modern  world  of  Europe, 
it  is  at  least  the  petrifaction  of  what  was  once  living  and  signif- 
icant. The  original  adoration  of  nobility  was  not  snobbery  but 
respect  for  real  superiority.  But  the  modern  American  love  of 
a  lord  is  the  worship  of  a  withered  leaf.  That  all  men  are 
created  free  and  equal  is  a  nobler  proposition,  if  "free"  be  in- 
terpreted as  having  a  right  to  one's  own  body  and  soul,  and 
"equal"  as  having  a  right  to  develop  one's  own  body  and  soul 
to  their  highest.  America  became  the  exponent  of  these  ideals; 
every  other  conception  has  been  tried  and  found  wanting.  And 
for  America  to  hash  up  again  hereditary  aristocracy  and  mili- 
tarism would  be  a  ridiculous  anti-climax.  If  America  breaks 
away  from  her  ideals,  humanity's  last  chance  will  be  gone — at 
least  for  the  white  races:  for  perhaps — who  knows? — destiny 
would  seek  its  next  instrument  among  the  despised  colored 
races.  O  if  America  were  less  conscious  of  her  own  greatness, 
and  more  conscious  of  the  greatness  of  her  opportunity! 

"The  Eighteenth  Century  saw  the  dawn  of  generous  ideals 
of  the  Brotherhood  of  Man.  What  the  Jewish  prophets  had 
dreamed  twenty-five  centuries  before,  became  the  dream  of 
the  noblest  spirits  of  Europe.  The  Nineteenth  Century,  which, 
by  its  electric  links,  has  brought  the  nations  nearer  to  one  an- 
other physically  than  ever  before,  yet  closes  on  the  tableau  of 
their  spiritual  separation — each  armed  to  the  teeth  and  fear- 
fully watching  the  others,  anxious  to  outstrip  them  not  in  great- 
ness but  in  bigness.  The  Nineteenth  Century  has  set  aside  the 
ideals  of  the  eighteenth,  but  I  dare  to  hope  it  has  not  destroyed 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      37 

them.  They  will  return — but  purified  of  whatever  dross  of  false 
idealism  was  in  them,  and  more  equated  to  the  facts  of  life. 
But  let  it  be  remembered  that  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity, 
do  not  belong  to  the  world  of  facts  but  to  the  world  of  ideals. 
They  are  the  way  man's  aspiration  shapes  the  facts,  as  man's 
will  cuts  tunnels  through  the  dumb  mountains  and  lays  cables 
beneath  the  blind  seas. 

"The  Nineteenth  Century's  own  idols  have  not  proved  so 
worshipful  as  it  imagined.  If  the  Press  diffuses  light,  it  can 
also — as  Bismarck  discovered — diffuse  darkness.  If  Science 
as  a  maid-of -all- work  is  a  success,  Science  as  an  interpreter  of 
the  mystery  of  the  Universe  is  a  dismal  failure.  Even  her  im- 
mense practical  boons  only  serve  to  amplify  our  senses  and 
increase  our  speed:  they  cannot  increase  our  happiness.  Giants 
suffer  as  well  as  dwarfs,  and  the  soul  may  sit  lonely  and  sad, 
surrounded  by  mechanical  miracles. 

"As  ever,  the  soul  is  the  true  centre  of  things,  and  if  America 
remembers  this,  she  may  steer  safely  through  the  immense 
spiritual  perils  of  the  coming  century  towards  her  old  goal  of  a 
noble  democracy,  and  may  yet  point  the  true  path  of  civiliza- 
tion to  the  feudal  nations  and  exhibit  the  divine  element  in 
the  long  procession  of  the  centuries." 


XXI 

Of  these  ideas  "The  Melting  Pot"  was  but  a  dramatic 
expansion.  "  A  fig  for  your  feuds  and  vendettas !  Germans 
and  Frenchmen,  Irishmen  and  Englishmen,  Jews  and  Rus- 
sians— into  the  Crucible  with  you  all.  God  is  making  the 
American!"1  And  David  Quixano,  the  young  musician, 

1  The  play,  so  fatuously  suppressed  by  the  Foreign  Office,  has  become  al- 
most a  text-book  in  many  American  schools  and  colleges  and  is  constantly 
performed  by  their  dramatic  societies.  As  I  write,  I  receive  a  letter  from  a 
school-mistress  in  Connecticut  who  says:  "My  pupils  love  the  story  and 
quotations,  and  we  often  recite  the  last  glorious  outburst  'What  a  seething 
and  a  bubbling!  Celt  and  Latin,  etc.'  Oh,  it  is  splendid  to  see  the  little 
Citizens — Latins,  Celts,  Jews  and  Gentiles,  all  repeat  it  understandmgly." 


38  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS   AND  A  PREFACE 

whose  family  had  been  swallowed  up  in  the  Kishineff  po- 
grom, told  the  comfortable  cultured  Europe-apers: 

"You  look  back  on  Europe  as  a  pleasure-ground,  a  palace 
of  art.  But  I  know  it  is  sodden  with  blood,  red  with  bestial 
massacres!" 

(" Romantic  claptrap  this,"  according  to  Mr.  Walkley,  the 
dramatic  critic;  there  are  signs  he  knows  better  now.) 
But  it  was  in  vain  that  my  young  idealist,  raising  hands  of 
benediction  towards  the  Western  sky,  and  his  yet  more 
glamorous  vision,  prayed: 

"Peace,  Peace  to  all  ye  unborn  millions,  fated  to  fill  this  giant 
Continent — the  God  of  our  children  give  you  Peace!" 

Under  the  slogan  of  "Preparedness"  America  is  now  seething 
with  incipient  Prussianism,  and  announcing  with  the  first 
fine  careless  rapture  of  discovery  that  "to  ensure  peace 
you  must  prepare  for  war!"  Para  bellum,  forsooth.  Para 
cerebellum!  Poor  simple  souls !  So  this  fallacy,  like  the  con- 
fidence trick,  is  perennial,  needing  only  a  constant  renewal 
of  fools. 

"I  know  that  maxim — it  was  made  in  hell, 
This  wealth  of  ships  and  guns  inflames  the  vulgar 
And  makes  the  very  war  it  guards  against. 
How  often,  as  the  Master  said,  the  sight 
Of  means  to  do  ill  deeds  makes  ill  deeds  done."  * 

And  so  the  most  peace-loving  country  in  the  world  is  tc 
have  the  second  largest  navy,  and  in  time  no  doubt  "thf 
largest  on  earth."  I  agree  with  Lord  Rosebery  in  lamenting 
this  victory  of  Ahriman  in  America. 

1  "The  War  God,"  Act  I. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      39 

XXII 

En  passant  I  may  remark  on  the  shallowness  of  the  con- 
tention that  the  emergence  of  the  " hyphenated"  American 
during  the  war  has  destroyed  the  "  Mel  ting  Pot"  thesis. 
It  is  true  Americans  from  the  Fatherland  have  suddenly 
resumed  the  German,  even  to  the  point  of  abetting  criminal 
plots  against  the  Allies.  But  this  is  no  more  a  disproof  of 
the  fusing  process  than — if  I  may  use  a  vulgar  image — sea- 
sickness is  a  disproof  of  digestion.  An  abnormal  condition 
has  simply  counteracted  the  process.  Sympathy  with  their 
country  in  its  hour  of  trial  has  given  these  American  Ger- 
mans a  violent  centrifugal  pull  which  counteracts  the  cen- 
tripetal pull  of  America.  But  their  re-assertion  of  race  has 
only  made  the  majority  of  Americans^more  conscious  than 
ever  of  their  Americanism,  more  determined  than  ever  to 
be  a  non-European  and  politically  homogeneous  people. 
I  say  politically  homogeneous  because  the  actual  physical 
fusion  is  a  long  process  and  is  not  even  necessary,  any  more 
than  it  is  necessary  in  Britain  for  Welshmen  to  marry 
Highland  women  or  countesses  to  wed  costermongers. 

That  Americans  have  forgotten  "  that  their  chief  and  only 
allegiance  was  to  the  great  Government  under  which  they 
live"  is,  said  President  Wilson,  "the  only  thing  within  our 
borders  that  has  given  us  grave  concern  in  recent  months." 
The  attempts — as  yet  happily  defeated — to  bring  back 
America  to  the  wretched  divisions  of  the  world  it  has  left 
behind;  to  call  in  the  Old  World  to  upset  the  balance  of  the 
New,  is  only  another  of  the  proofs  of  the  unrelaxing  per- 
sistence of  the  sea  of  evil  to  dash  itself  against  the  dykes 
of  good  in  that  ceaseless  war  for  the  world,  which  consti- 
tutes the  great  cosmic  drama.1 

1  Canada,  it  should  not  be  forgotten,  is  only  second  as  a  "Melting  Pot" 
to  the  United  States,  and  the  effect  of  the  war  upon  Teutonic  blood  there  is 


40  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS   AND   A   PREFACE 

XXIII 

The  "War  Devil"  which  opens  this  volume  and  which 
unlike  all  the  other  war-pieces  was  written  before  the  war 
(having  appeared  indeed  in  such  Continental  organs  as  the 
Neue  Freie  Presse  of  Vienna  simultaneously  with  its  ap- 
pearance in  the  Daily  Chronicle  in  April,  1913),  does  not, 
unfortunately,  need  the  faintest  modification  now  that  its 
outlook  has  been  so  wretchedly  vindicated.  That  neither 
Hague  Palaces  of  Peace  nor  ever-mounting  Armaments 
would  suffice  to  keep  the  world's  peace  unless  Reason  and 
Love  set  to  work  to  untie  the  world's  knots,  was  a  conclusion 
that  sentimentalists  did  not  like  to  face,  believing  as  they 
do  in  short  cuts  to  the  Millennium.  I  differ  further  from 
Mr.  Carnegie  in  holding  that  a  mechanical  millennium  is 
not  only  not  possible  but  also  not  desirable.  There  are 
worse  devils  than  even  the  War  Devil,  and  I  said  so  plainly 
both  in  this  article  and  in  the  lyric  "Lament"  which  was 
published  in  the  first  number  of  the  Daily  News  and  Leader, 
and  had  the  enthusiastic  endorsement  of  the  late  Watts- 
Dunton.  Your  modern  thinker — he  goes  so  fast  nowadays 
he  is  a  futurist  rather  than  a  contemporary — has  always 
failed  to  allow  for  the  element  of  truth  or  necessity  in 
ancient  institutions — from  Capitalism  to  Christianity, 
from  war  to  sex-segregation.  The  attack  insufficiently 
prepared  by  a  superficial  analysis  naturally  fails:  is  indeed 
justly  baffled  by  the  immortal  residuum.  In  "the  Next 

shown  by  the  fact  that  the  inhabitants  of  Berlin  (Ontario),  who  are  mostly 
of  German  descent,  petitioned  to  change  the  name  of  their  town!  The 
Ukrainians,  a  more  recent  immigration,  yet  numerous  enough  to  support  ten 
newspapers  in  Ukrainian,  enlisted  more  freely  than  they  were  accepted,  since 
it  was  feared  their  hatred  to  Russia  might  not  yet  be  sufficiently  melted. 
See  their  national  organ  Swboda  for  February  29,  1916,  published  in  Jersey 
City,  in  an  idiom  of  which  an  old  Russian  order  characteristically  remarked: 
"There  never  was,  is  not,  and  cannot  be  any  Ukrainian  language." 


WITH   AN  APOLOGIA   FOR   NOT   BEING   PRO-GERMAN      41 

War" — provoked  by  the  shower  of  premature  prophecies 
that  this  would  be  the  last,  that  it  was  "a  war  to  end  war"- 
an  attempt  is  made  at  a  more  exhaustive  analysis  of  the 
causes  of  war  than  Pacifists1  (who,  according  to  Dr.  Me- 
lamed's  learned  Theorie,  Ursprung,  und  Geschichte  der 
Friedensidee,  have  declaimed  against  it  for  2500  years) 
have  ever  troubled  to  make. 

As  wind  and  fire  and  water  have  shaped  the  lands  so  war 
has  shaped  their  distribution  among  the  peoples.  As  the 
rain-gauge  records  rain  so  history  records  blood.  Yet 
Canon  Gore  finds  the  cause  of  the  present  war  in  Europe's 
materialism  and  selfishness  (as  if  the  Kaiser's  inspiration 
was  not  theological),  for  Dr.  R.  A.  Cram  it  is  due  to  our 
inability  to  build  Gothic  Cathedrals  (as  if  the  Cathedral 
Ages  were  bloodless)  and  Professor  Hobhouse  traces  it  to 
the  modern  cult  of  lawlessness  in  art  and  life,  even  in  Berg- 
son's  rehabilitation  of  instinct  against  reason;  as  if  Prussian 
militarism  was  not  precisely  the  glorification  of  law  and 
order,  of  reason  made  mechanical.  The  analysis  of  war  and 
politics  is  continued  in  the  articles  on  "The  Levity  of  War 
Politics,"  "The  Absurd  Side  of  Alliances,"  "The  Military 
Pacifists,"  "The  Ruined  Romantics,"  "Some  Apologists 
for  Germany,"  and  "The  War  for  the  Words,"  all  of  which 
articles  grew  out  of  the  attempt  to  write  this  Preface  to  a 
much  smaller  book,  and  had  finally  to  be  given  their  own 
way  as  separate  entities.  "ParacLise  Lost"  on  the  other 
hand  was  my  first  thought  when  the  war  broke  out — it  has 
been  already  published  in  several  places — notably  in  King 
Albert's  Book.  Patriotism  and  Percentage  is  in  a  lighter 
vein,  an  old  satire  of  mine,  dating  from  1904,  and  more 

1 1  must  head  off  at  once  the  critic  who  would  ignore  the  contents  of  this 
book,  by  a  digression  proving  the  right  word  is  "  Pacificist."  But  " Pazifist " 
is  used  in  Germany  and  "  Pacifiste  "  hi  French,  and  we  must  accept  this 
short  form  only  as  a  war-economy. 


42  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

than  once  republished.  Its  object  was  to  show  the  absurd 
tangle  that  had  resulted  from  the  separate  evolutions  of 
internationalism  and  nationalism,  and  since  we  are  now 
again  talking  tariffs,  I  have  reprinted  its  companion  satire 
of  Protectionism  in  the  States.  In  pursuance  of  the  same 
line  of  satiric  suggestion  I  wrote  to  the  Times  in  1909  sug- 
gesting that  as  the  new  German  Dreadnoughts,  which 
were  supposed  to  be  aimed  against  us,  could  not  be  built 
without  the  new  German  loan  of  forty  millions,  it  was 
treasonable  for  any  British  subject,  banker  or  stockbroker 
to  take  part  in  it.  This  was  of  course  a  hit  at  our  British 
policy  of  muddling  along  intellectually,  but  in  Germany 
it  was  received  as  a  piece  of  disgusting  Chauvinism;  a 
reception  recalling  in  a  humble  way  the  fury  in  France  over 
Gilbert's  lines  in  which  a  certain  gallant  British  skipper 
explains  why  he  sailed  away  before  a  French  frigate: 

"  For  to  fight  a  French  fal-lal 
Is  like  hitting  of  a  gal 
And  a  lubberly  thing  for  to  do." 

XXIV 

Reviewing  my  "War  Devil"  with  handsome  compli- 
ments, Mr.  William  Archer  in  an  article  called  "Love, 
Reason  and  War"  nevertheless  boggled  at  my  formula  of 
"Reason  and  Love,"  and  confessed  himself  "disappointed 
at  the  inert  pessimism  of  the  conclusion."  For,  he  urged, 
if  "Love,"  or  a  "passionate  sense  of  brotherhood  must 
possess  us  before  we  can  exorcise  the  War  Devil,  there  is 
no  ray  of  hope  on  the  horizon  ...  for  the  present  state 
of  tension  must  certainly  snap  long  before  'a  passionate 
sense  of  brotherhood'  can  ripen  to  relax  it;  and  a  world- 
war  would  effectually  crush  and  ruin  whatever  tender 
shoots  of  world-fraternity  may  now  be  germinating  here 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      43 

and  there."  He  thought  therefore  that  the  war  could  and 
should  be  staved  off  by  some  more  rational  means  than 
Love. 

It  will  be  seen  that  the  "inert  pessimism"  must  now  be- 
long to  Mr.  Archer,  for  despite  the  world-war  I  do  not 
believe  "the  passionate  sense  of  brotherhood"  so  remote, 
indeed  it  not  seldom  reaches  across  the  opposing  trenches. 
I  am  not  thinking  merely  of  the  Christmas  truce.  One 
hears  on  all  sides  of  the  friendly  relations  set  up  between 
English  and  Turks,  between  English  and  Prussians  even. 
At  Souchez,  so  an  officer  back  from  the  trenches  told  a 
friend  of  mine,  the  Prussians  actually  utter  a  warning  shout 
to  our  men  when  their  Minenwerfer  menaces.  The  artillery 
being  of  course  remote  and  impersonal  shares  the  apathy  or 
hatred  of  the  civilian,  but  the  men  who  are  brought  into 
living  touch  (strange  words)  with  one  another  have  the 
comradeship  easily  passing  into  affection  that  comes  to  all 
those  who  go  through  common  danger.  Were  the  animosity 
between  the  French  and  German  real — as  real  as  between, 
say,  Balkan  neighbors — how  could  we  possibly  explain 
that  astonishing  episode  recorded  by  Lord  Northcliffe  in  his 
vivid  narrative  of  Verdun — when  through  a  rapid  thaw 
"the  parapets  melted  and  subsided  and  two  long  lines 
of  men  stood  up  naked  as  it  were  before  each  other,"  and 
"the  French  and  German  officers  turned  their  backs" 
while  "the  men  on  each  side  rebuilt  their  parapets  without 
firing  a  single  shot."  Supposing  to  fire  would  have  meant 
"wholesale  murder"  what  else  were  they  out  for?  Who  has 
ever  heard  of  two  rival  dogs  that  when  their  chains  broke 
waited  to  be  fastened  up  again?  1 

Mr.  Archer  thinks  that  Reason  is  enough.    But  Reason 

1 1  asked  a  young  relative  of  mine  back  from  Gallipoli  how  he  could  find 
it  in  his  heart  to  kill  Turks — a  people  he  had  never  seen  before.  "  I  felt  I  was 
killing  Germans,"  he  replied  simply. 


44  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

may  tell  us  what  should  be  done,  it  supplies  no  motive- 
power  for  doing  it.  If  Love  without  Reason  is  fruitful  in 
folly,  Reason  without  Love  is  altogether  sterile.  Only  by 
Reason  and  Love  united  can  we  untie  our  knots.  What 
comes  of  trying  to  run  the  world  by  Unreason  and  Hate 
my  lines  on  "The  Place  of  Peace"  sufficiently  indicate. 

I  was  startled  to  find  that  Tolstoy  in  his  secret  Diary 
published  in  Russia  this  January  uses  the  same  formula  as 
was  laid  down  in  my  article  of  1913.  In  Reason  and  Love 
he  too  finds  the  only  practicable  alternative  to  the  present 
governance  of  Society.1  The  coincidence  is  the  more  pe- 
culiar since  Tolstoy  unfortunately  preferred  to  base  his 
teaching  upon  Biblical  texts.  "  Reason  and  Love"  is  a 
better  basis.  Not  only  can  the  Devil  quote  Scripture  for 
his  own  purposes,  but  large  sections  of  people  are  repelled 
by  quotations  professing  a  supernatural  authoritativeness. 
Moreover,  elasticity  is  lost.  Tolstoy,  for  example,  finding 
the  text  "Thou  shalt  not  kill,"  leapt  to  annex  it  as  an  im- 
movable basis  for  Pacifism.  "Reason  and  Love"  however 
might  very  well  say  sometimes:  "Thou  shalt  kill."  Not 
to  mention  that  a  score  of  Biblical  texts  say  so  likewise. 
Mr.  Archer  in  shying  at  the  word  "Love"  was  only  a  child 
of  the  age  before  the  war.  The  dry  distrust  of  emotion  was 
perhaps  due  to  the  supposed  Shavian  philosophy,  though  a 
quarter  of  a  century  ago  I  remember  Shaw  telling  a  Fabian 
audience  how  he  cried,  when  he  first  came  up  to  London, 
to  think  of  all  the  misery  and  was  persuaded  he  would  es- 
tablish Socialism  in  a  fortnight.  But  I  remain  unregener- 

1  Our  world  is  governed  by  violence — that  is,  by  hatred.  Therefore  the 
majority  of  those  who  constitute  society,  its  dependent,  weakly  members — 
women,  children,  and  the  unintelligent — are  reared  by  malignity  and  join 
the  ranks  of  hatred.  But  if  the  world  were  governed  by  Reason  and  Love, 
then  this  majority  would  be  reared  in  Love  and  would  join  its  ranks.  To  this 
end  Reason  and  Love  must  persistently  assert  their  existence. — TOLSTOY'S 
Diary. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      45 

ate;  I  am  quite  aware  that  the  word  "Love"  is  fly-blown, 
and  like  the  grand  old  name  of  gentleman,  "soiled  with  all 
ignoble  use."  Nevertheless 

"Love  is  and  was  my  Lord  and  King," 

and  I  abide  by  my  formula. 

Cecil  Rhodes  thought  that  if  there  was  a  God — which 
was  doubtful — he  would  want  the  world  to  be  all  English — 
that  was  certain.  This  is  always  how  the  overflowing 
energy  of  a  great  people  manifests  itself.  Bulwer  Lytton 
said  every  man  was  a  patriot  for  the  best  of  all  reasons — 
his  country  had  produced  him.  The  true  patriot  cannot 
imagine  the  world-spirit  desiring  to  produce  any  other 
types.  The  late  Max  O'Rell  told  me  that  to  a  Parisian  it 
seemed  comic  that  anybody  should  not  be  a  Frenchman. 
Pan-Germanism  is  therefore  no  abnormal  dream.  Austria's 
old  motto  ran:  "Austria  est  imperare  orbi  universo."  But 
it  is  not  more  magniloquent  than  our  own  Rule,  Britannia, 

"All  thine  shall  be  the  subject  main, 
And  every  shore  it  circles,  thine." 

And  this  "elan  vital"  for  Empire  is  sophisticated  by  the 
poets  and  orators  as  Virgil  moralized  the  Roman  clutch  for 
the  world: 

"  Tu  regere  imperio  populos,  Romane,  memento; 
Hoe  tibi  erunt  artis,  pacisque  imponere  morem, 
Par  cere  subjectis  et  debellare  superbos" 

But  the  God  of  Reason  and  Love  desires  the  world  to  be 
neither  British  nor  German. 

XXV 

The  Reform  Club  of  New  York  has  presented  to  President 
Wilson  a  memorandum  as  to  the  needs  of  the  various  coun- 


46  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

tries  for  ports  or  markets,  which  needs  constitute  the  main 
driving-forces  towards  war.  Not  one  but  could  be  equitably 
supplied  by  mutual  arrangement  to  the  advantage  of  the 
world  at  large.  Across  these  commercial  needs  cut  however 
the  racial  yearnings  and  national  ideals,  but  even  these 
could  be  adjusted  by  Reason  and  Love,  which  could  at  least 
remove  all  inequalities  and  oppressions  everywhere;  in 
which  case  much  fanatical  and  purposeless  patriotism  would 
be  peacefully  absorbed  by  superior  Kulturen,  and  the  nerve 
of  nationality  would  be  dulled.  Those  who  suppose  an 
acute  sense  of  nationality  would  continue  to  co-exist  with 
"  World-Peace"  want  to  have  their  cake  and  eat  it  too. 
There  would  be  just  such  differences  as  subsist  between 
Italian  towns  to-day,  no  two  alike,  yet  the  civic  conscious- 
ness purged  (or  despoiled)  of  the  wild  flavor  of  the  days 
when  Pisa  fought  Genoa,  Siena  Florence,  or  Pavia  Ravenna. 

XXVI 

Although  in  " Militarism,  British  and  Prussian,"  I  defend 
the  British  sub-conscious  and  defensive  variety  of  militarism 
against  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw's  identification  of  it  with  the 
true  or  Prussian  variety,  I  had  already  suggested  in  "The 
War  Devil"  that  there  is  still  too  much  Khaki  in  our 
cosmos.  Our  civilization,  though  pacific  and  industrial  and 
free  from  military  swagger,  still  revolves  round  a  Court 
conceived  on  the  old  military  models,  and  atavistic  in  its 
pageantry  and  its  sympathies.  Hence  the  disrespect  for 
science  and  letters,  and  education,  which  revenges  itself 
ironically  when  in  a  war  of  chemists  the  chemist  is  displaced 
or  ruled  by  the  Colonel.  The  Kaiser  was  made  an  Admiral 
of  the  Fleet,  just  as  the  Tsar  has  now  been  made  a  Field 
Marshal.  Science  will  not  come  to  its  own  till  a  foreign 
monarch  is  made  F.  R.  S.,  which  when  you  come  to  think 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      47 

of  it  is  the  only  appropriate  title  for  him.  A  Pension  List 
like  ours  for  Literature  and  Science — "To  Mrs.  T.  K. 
Cheyne  in  consideration  of  the  services  of  her  husband,  the 
late  Professor  Cheyne,  to  Biblical  criticism,  and  of  her 
straitened  circumstances,  £30—"  suggests  rather  the  Re- 
public of  Andorra  or  San  Marino  than  the  greatest  Empire 
the  world  has  ever  seen.  There  is  neither  a  Minister  of 
Fine  Arts  as  there  is  even  in  Belgium,  nor  is  there  a  National 
Theatre  to  exalt  the  national  temper  or  to  rescue  the  drama 
from  under  the  unclean  thumb  of  the  Syndicate.  Even 
in  the  Lord  Chamberlain's  office  one  stumbles  on  colonels, 
and  when  "The  Next  Religion"  was  prohibited  I  had  to 
discuss  theology  with  colonels,  of  the  verbally  uninspired 
kind  that  corrected  Gilbert's  "chambers  fit  for  a  lord"  into 
"chambers  fit  for  a  heaven,"  it  being  an  office  instruction 
that  "Lord"  was  a  theological  term.  As  the  horizon  ac- 
cording to  Sydney  Smith  was — when  a  certain  lady  ap- 
peared— clouded  with  majors,  so  is  the  horizon  of  the 
British  Government  darkened  with  colonels,  gentle  and 
honest  as  Colonel  Newcome,  but  also  as  inefficient.  They 
are  Colonels  even  in  the  War  Office. 

XXVII 

And  it  is  perhaps  because  they  are  there — instead  of 
plain  business  men — that  it  is  so  difficult  to  help  one's 
country.  At  the  very  outbreak  of  the  war  I  indicated  to  a 
Cabinet  Minister  of  my  acquaintance  a  serious  defect  in 
one  of  our  munitions — of  which  I  had  been  specially  in- 
formed— and  my  letter  was  neatly  docketed.  When  the 
War  Office  was  clamoring  for  men,  I  asked  it  to  sanction 
the  raising  of  a  Jewish  Foreign  Legion,  similar  to  the  Zion 
Mule  Corps  which  was  doing  so  brilliantly  at  the  Dar- 
danelles and  the  commander  of  which  was  cabling  me  in 


48  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

the  spirit  of  Oliver  Twist,  and  again  the  request  was  ac- 
knowledged. Finally  I  drew  attention  in  the  most  authori- 
tative quarter  to  a  most  important  new  invention,  which 
might  not  impossibly  make  the  whole  difference  between 
defeat  and  victory  and  which  was  patriotically  offered  to 
the  Government  without  a  farthing  of  royalty.  This 
time — so  dire  was  the  need — it  looked  as  if  something  would 
be  done  and  the  thing  was  pushed  in  many  directions  and 
by  many  influences.  Yet  six  months  passed  without  result! 
Outraged,  I  made  a  supreme  effort.  A  Cabinet  Minister 
assured  me  everything  would  be  done  to  help  me.  I  re- 
plied indignantly  that  it  was  I  who  was  trying  to  help  the 
country.  I  was  now  invited  to  the  War  Office,  courteously 
received  by  colonels.  Things  happened — and  then  again 
silence!  The  inventor's  nerves  broke  down  at  last  and 
at  the  sick  bed  we  both  abandoned  the  hope  of  helping 
such  a  country.  Four  months  later  and  with  practically 
no  further  effort  from  outside  the  invention  was  to  some 
extent  taken  up!  Now  of  course  either  it  is  a  useless 
invention  and  should  not  have  been  taken  up  even 
now,  or  it  is  supremely  important,  and  the  delay  was 
criminal.  The  inventor,  instead  of  being  prostrated  and 
almost  killed  off  should  have  been  imprisoned  by  our  anx- 
ious country  in  a  palace,  with  black  slaves  to  gratify  every 
wish,  and  attendant  mechanicians  waiting  with  motor-cars 
to  bear  off  the  perfected  pattern  as  soon  as  it  was  finally 
tested.  Imagine  the  Germans  having  the  chance  of  such 
an  invention!  "Almost,"  I  say  to  the  War  Office,  "almost 
thou  persuadest  me  to  be  pro- German."  The  Government 
offices  have  now  abandoned  red  tape  for  white,  which  is 
more  economical.  Let  us  hope,  it  is  also  symbolical.1  But 
it  would  be  unfair  not  to  admit  that  with  a  War  Office 

Compare  the  amusing  chapter  on  "Olympus"  in  The  First  Hundred 
Thousand,  by  Ian  Hay 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      49 

adapted  for  a  "Contemptible  Little  Army"  called  on  sud- 
denly to  cater  for  millions,  it  has  done  better  than  could 
have  been  expected.  Not  to  mention  that  in  this  instance 
professional  scientific  jealousies  may  have  sub-consciously 
impeded,  for  as  Hazlitt  says:  The  unavoidable  aim  of  all 
corporate  books  of  learning  is  not  to  grow  wise,  and  to 
teach,  but  to  prevent  anyone  here  from  being  or  seeming 
wiser  than  themselves. 


XXVIII 

If  we  are  to  get  away  from  the  colonels  it  must  not  be 
merely  by  calling  in  science  to  help  organize  war  as  Professor 
Armstrong  demands — indirectly  as  intellect  would  thus 
profit  in  the  scale  of  recognition  once  it  was  mobilized  for 
war.  There  must  be  a  complete  "trans-valuation  of 
values."  Sir  William  Tilden  demands  more  honors  for 
science  and  that  the  Presidents  of  Scientific  bodies  should 
be  ex  officio  members  of  the  Privy  Council.  Even  this 
suggestion,  excellent  as  it  is,  does  not  go  far  enough.  What 
we  have  to  do  is  to  recognize  the  emergence  of  a  modern 
pacific,  industrial  civilization  from  the  outworn  militarist 
State  by  a  new  set  of  social  symbols  and  a  transference  of 
honors  to  the  leaders  of  the  new  organism.  Otherwise 
Prussians  remain  potential  in  the  germ  everywhere.  This 
is  a  reform  I  have  often  advocated.  Here  for  example  is  a 
speech  made  by  me  in  the  last  century  to  a  Business 
Club — the  date  is  not  noted,  but  admirers  of  Lord  Rosebery 
may  trace  it  from  the  allusion  to  him,  which  shows  him 
more  in-seeing  than  most  politicians. 

"When  I  find  Lord  Rosebery  pointing  out  to  his  nation  that 
the  silent  campaigns  of  commerce  are  at  least  as  decisive  of  the 
fate  of  nations  as  the  noisy  operations  of  the  battlefield,  I  feel 


50  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND   A  PREFACE 

that  here  is  a  point  of  view  which  mere  politicians  rarely  occupy. 
When  I  read  that  since  we  conquered  Egypt  and  the  Soudan 
our  exports  to  those  places  have  gone  down  by  a  half,  and  that 
Germany  and  America  are  already  preparing  to  munch  the 
chestnuts  we  have  pulled  out  of  the  fire  in  South  Africa,  I 
suspect  that  possibly  life  is  not  all  blood  and  khaki.  Perhaps 
we  are  really  at  death-grips  with  Germany,  for  example,  though 
nominally  at  peace.  And  Germany,  we  are  told,  conducts  her 
commercial  campaign  as  scientifically  as  a  military  campaign, 
while  England  conducts  her  military  campaign  as  unscien- 
tifically as  a  commercial  campaign.  Lord  Rosebery  deduces 
that  both  campaigns  should  be  conducted  with  equal  science. 
My  more  ignorant  literary  imagination  takes  a  wilder  flight  and 
deduces  that  both  campaigns  should  be  put  on  an  equal  footing  of 
honor  and  dignity:  if  indeed  the  victories  of  peace  are  not  su- 
perior in  glory  to  the  victories  of  war.  For,  if  we  look  facts 
in  the  face,  we  must  see  that  the  modern  world  is  not  the  ancient 
world  nor  the  mediaeval  world.  We  must  not  be  deluded  and 
enslaved  by  the  phrases  and  the  ideals  that  belonged  to  a  primi- 
tive world  minus  steam  and  electricity.  In  applying  the  old 
military  methods  to  the  solution  of  modem  political  problems, 
we  may  be  as  antiquated  and  out-of-date  as  we  should  be  in 
using  the  tactics  or  weapons  of  Wellington  in  a  modern  battle. 
We  may  come  to  recognize  that  even  as  the  spasms  and  convul- 
sions of  Nature,  though  she  works  through  them,  are  less  im- 
portant than  the  slow  silent  everyday  forces,  so  History  is  now 
made  less  by  the  fire  and  sword  of  the  fighters  than  by  the 
humble  prosaic  activities  of  the  stay-at-homes.  Even  if  we 
regard  the  fighters  as  the  best  means  of  expressing  the  na- 
tional force  in  a  crisis,  let  us  remember  that  it  is  the  national 
force  that  they  express:  for  since  they  themselves  are  in  every 
sense  a  destructive  not  a  productive  element,  the  very  pos- 
sibility of  an  effective  fighting  force  rests  upon  the  commercial 
prosperity  of  the  country.  The  commercial  army  thus  not  only 
fights  on  its  own  account  with  the  commercial  armies  of  other 
nations,  but  it  sustains  and  feeds  its  own  military  army.  Not 
upon  the  playing-fields  of  Eton  are  our  victories  won,  but  in  the 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      51 

factories  of  Manchester,  and  the  mines  of  Newcastle,  and  the 
shipyards  of  the  Clyde.  Nay  more.  My  literary  misunder- 
standing of  English  history  convinces  me  that  not  by  soldiers 
has  our  great  Empire  been  built  up,  but  by  Trading  Companies, 
India  by  the  East  India  Company,  Canada  by  the  Hudson  Bay 
Fur  Company,  South  Africa  by  mining  companies.  And  this 
is  why  it  seems  to  my  foolish  literary  simplicity  that  at  least 
as  much  glory  and  prestige  should  attach  to  the  commercial 
branch  of  the  Army,  as  to  the  military  branch  of  the  Army,  and 
that  the  portraits  of  the  captains  of  industry  should  be  in  every 
shop-window.  But  when,  gentlemen,  I  see  Parliament  voting 
for  the  rival  branch  of  the  service  a  hundred  millions  without 
turning  a  hair,  while  it  becomes  apoplectic  at  a  request  for  a 
million  or  two  for  your  side,  for  technical  education,  let  us  say, 
then  I  despair  of  ever  understanding  anything  about  politics. 
I  am  afraid  nothing  will  be  done  till  you  manage  to  invest  your 
branch  with  something  of  the  glamor  of  your  rivals. 

"You,  too,  must  take  the  popular  imagination  with  splendid 
symbols.  You,  too,  must  have  flags  and  banners,  uniforms  and 
bands  and  patriotic  processions.  Already  mafficking  rhymes 
with  trafficking.  Our  poets  have  missed  their  opportunity.  Com- 
merce must  get  a  laureate:  not  the  sort  of  bard  whose  panegyrics 
of  dog-biscuits  and  cherry-brandy  may  be  found  on  the  hoard- 
ings, but  one  who  will  perceive  the  pulse  of  true  greatness  in 
the  throb  of  the  machine-room.  For  my  prosaic  part,  much 
as  I  admire  the  soldier  who  plods  uncomplainingly  the  dusty 
road  of  duty  and  death,  I  cannot  see  that  the  humble  factory- 
hand  does  less  for  England  and  the  Empire.  He,  too,  may  be 
mutilated  by  machinery,  but  though  he  may  not  be  compen- 
sated by  a  little  pension,  he  has  not  the  compensating  con- 
sciousness of  honorable  scars,  of  wounds  gained  in  his  country's 
cause.  Why  not?  Is  duty  heroic  only  when  it  is  clad  in  khaki 
and  accompanied  by  a  band?  Why  have  the  fighting  classes 
the  monopoly  of  the  motto  that  'England  expects  every  man 
to  do  his  duty? '  Why  is  it  not  hung  up  in  workshops  to  counter- 
act the  teaching  of  the  Trade-Unions  that  it  is  wrong  to  do  an 
honest  day's  work? 


52  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

"And,  developing  this  thought  of  the  commercial  Army  in 
my  ignorant  literary  way,  I  ask  why  under  the  guise  of  strikes 
and  lockouts  are  our  commercial  battalions  allowed  to  fire  at 
one  another,  to  the  destruction  of  England  and  the  Empire? 
We  have  heard  much  of  Little-Englanders,  but  how  about  the 
Little-Imperialists,  those  who  look  only  on  the  big  drum  side 
of  the  Empire  and  disregard  the  commercial  side,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  the  artistic  and  intellectual  sides,  which  also  form  part 
of  the  greatness  of  a  nation,  as  distinguished  from  the  greatness 
of  a  pack  of  wolves  or  a  hive  of  bees!  Gentlemen,  let  us  educate 
our  schoolboys  in  true  Imperialism — to  feel  that  whichever 
army  they  enter  they  are  equally  serving  their  country,  and  that 
the  medals  won  at  Exhibitions  are  as  glorious  as  those  won  on 
the  battlefield.  As  every  line  drawn  from  the  centre  of  a  circle 
to  the  circumference  is  equal,  so  within  the  circle  of  the  com- 
munity is  every. faithful  service  alike  honorable." 


XXIX 

If  Reason  and  Love  had  only  been  applied  to  the  Woman 
Question — that  sex  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD  with  which  one 
section  of  this  book  is  occupied!  In  that  case  how  much  suf- 
fering and  folly  would  have  been  avoided.  Reason  would 
have  shown  that  social  and  economic  changes  had  altered  the 
status  of  woman,  and  Love  would  have  hastened  to  register 
the  new  status  by  the  vote.  But  the  army  of  the  East — 
with  its  predilection  for  the  harem — has  insisted  that  the 
army  of  the  West  must  hack  its  way  through.  This  is 
much  more  "a  war  to  end  war"  than  the  war  against 
Germany,  for  when  co-partnership  replaces  the  male 
hegemony,  it  is  questionable  if  the  female  principle — which 
is  the  creative  principle — will  so  lightly  tolerate  destruction. 
The  ironic  and  unnatural  introduction  of  the  male  principle 
of  militancy  into  the  campaign  for  female  rights  is  studied 
in  two  of  my  chapters,  the  first  of  which  appeared  in  the 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR   NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      53 

Fortnightly  Review  and  the  second  in  the  English  Review, 
and  they  are  followed  by  three  papers  (from  the  Daily 
Chronicle)  on  "The  War  and  the  Women"  and  concluded 
by  a  speech  of  my  own  before  the  United  Suffragists  at 
Kingsway  Hall,  demanding  the  instant  concession  of  votes 
for  women.  It  is  but  one  of  many  speeches  I  have  made  in 
this  ungrateful  cause,  and  after  all  that  its  advocates  have 
gone  through  and  after  having  myself  for  years  passed  in 
the  London  Clubs  as  a  pitifully  disordered  intellect,  once 
so  promising,  I  read  with  annoyance  rather  than  with 
satisfaction  the  fulsomely  honeyed  language  of  the  Times, 
hailing  woman  as  "the  primum  mobile  of  a  world  in  the 
making,"  or  the  bland  suggestion  of  the  Daily  Mail  that 
our  affairs  would  really  go  far  better,  were  half  the  Cabinet 
women.  They  seem  preparing  not  merely  to  turn  their 
coats  but  to  turn  them  into  bodices.  For  my  part  I  feel 
that  anti-suffrage  journalists  should  not  make  such  state- 
ments save  with  bell  and  candle,  and  wrapped  in  their 
own  sheets. 

XXX 

In  "The  War  Devil"  I  recalled  the  theory  of  Jean  de  Bloch 
that  modern  war  must  end  in  stalemate.  His  theory  was 
perhaps  imprinted  on  my  mind  by  the  accident  of  my  hav- 
ing made  his  acquaintance.  The  late  Dr.  Herzl,  the  founder 
of  Zionism,  it  was  who  brought  us  together  and  I  remember 
an  evening  with  both  of  them  in  a  box  at  a  London  theatre, 
where  a  beautiful  actress  played  in  a  popular  play,  to  the 
bewilderment  of  Bloch  who  could  not  understand  why  the 
actress  was  celebrated  or  the  play  popular.  It  was  his  first 
introduction  to  our  wonderful  stage.  "Elle  n'est  pas  fine  " 
he  said  and  refused  to  be  introduced  to  the  beautiful  one, 
lest  he  should  have  to  pay  her  a  compliment,  which  he  felt 
was  beyond  his  means,  millionaire  though  he  was.  Any- 


54  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

thing  but  a  visionary,  you  see,  this  little  Polish- Jewish 
Banker,  railway  constructor  and  administrator,  and  writer 
on  finance  and  economics,  surely  the  mildest-mannered  man 
that  ever  took  a  trench,  even  on  paper.  That  Tsar  Nich- 
olas II  should  have  established  the  Hague  Conference  under 
his  inspiration  seemed  much  more  natural  than  that  he 
should  be  the  most  learned  authority  on  modern  warfare. 
But  so  far  he  has  proved — as  Mr.  Philip  Snowden  said  in 
the  House  the  other  day — " uncannily  right."  And  when 
within  three  months  of  its  inception  the  war  began  to  show 
unmistakable  signs  of  going  his  way,  I  tried  to  remind  my 
fellow-citizens  of  the  contents  of  his  great  work,  The  War 
of  the  Future,  which,  published  in  six  volumes  in  Russia 
in  1898,  and  at  that  time  stirring  considerable  interest 
everywhere,  seemed  already  to  have  been  forgotten.  The 
occasion  arose  through  a  Times  misrepresentation  of  the 
activities  of  my  friend  Mr.  Jacob  Schiff  of  New  York,  a 
noble  figure,  whose  loathing  of  the  carnage  and  whose 
yearning  for  " Perpetual  Peace"  were  attributed  to  his 
being  a  "German  agent,"  and  holding  "a  brief  for  Ger- 
many." 

XXXI 

Cursed  be  the  Peace-Makers  for  they  shall  be  called  pro- 
German.  This  new  reading  of  the  Beatitude  had  already 
begun  and  it  has  since  been  applied  with  an  absence  of 
humor  that  is  amazing  even  in  war-time.  A  Nobel  Peace- 
Prizeman  who  protested  against  the  destruction  of  Europe 
has  actually  been  represented  (and  by  a  socialist  paper) 
as  a  puppet,  timed  by  the  Kaiser.  One  would  have  thought 
the  devil  out  of  hell  would  have  been  softened  by  all  the 
slaughter  to  consider  whether  the  same  results  might  not 
now  be  achieved  without  any  more  of  it.  As  the  Paris 
correspondent  of  the  Times  wrote  the  other  day,  "Any 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      55 

man,  be  he  private  citizen  or  Minister,  with  power  to  hasten 
even  by  a  day,  the  successful  end  of  this  necessary  but 
awful  carnage,  and  who  does  not  bend  his  every  thought 
and  effort  to  that  end,  is  unworthy  of  his  birthright  as  a 
civilized  being."  Happening  to  be  the  child  of  two  great 
civilizations,  and  beginning  to  fear  that  the  most  awful 
part  of  the  carnage  might  be  its  futility,  I  took  the  oppor- 
tunity (while  suggesting  that  since  peace  was  inevitable 
some  day,  Europe  had  better  try  to  reach  it  at  once  by  the 
Conference  Mr.  Schiff  was  proposing)  to  add  in  the  same 
letter  to  the  Times  a  synopsis  of  Bloch's  book.  The  date 
of  my  letter  was  November  26th,  1914.  I  do  not  know 
whether  the  Germans  would  at  so  early  a  date  have  ac- 
cepted a  Conference,  but  when  one  recalls  what  agonies 
and  calamities  the  world  has  suffered  since,  one  wonders 
more  than  ever  why  the  arbitrament  of  reason  is  universally 
commended,  while  the  sword  is  yet  undrawn,  but  becomes 
almost  a  treasonable  suggestion  after  the  mischief  of  the 
sword  is  hideously  visible.  Particularly  does  it  seem  a  part 
of  that  levity  of  war-politics  to  which  I  have  devoted  a 
couple  of  chapters,  that  the  Times  should  have  omitted 
from  my  letter  the  Bloch  synopsis,  though  it  was  pro- 
fessedly taken  from  Harmsworth's  Encyclopedia.  As  if 
not  as  much  light  as  possible,  but  as  little  as  possible,  should 
be  thrown  upon  the  transcendently  tragic  situation.  The 
synopsis  of  Bloch  ran  as  follows: 

"War  between  the  great  powers,  such,  for  example,  as  be- 
tween the  Dual  and  Triple  Alliance,  is  no  longer  possible  as 
the  arbiter  of  international  disputes.  Bloch  points  out  (i)  that 
the  two  great  alliances  are  nearly  equal  in  combined  numbers, 
wealth,  discipline,  and  moral  qualities;  (2)  that  modern  weapons 
and  tactical  methods  have  so  developed  that  the  defensive  force 
has  gained  an  immense  increment  of  strength  which  enables 
small  bodies  of  men  to  defend  a  widely-extended  front  against 


56  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

superior  numbers  of  the  enemy  for  a  protracted  period;  and 
(3)  that  the  frontiers  are  now  fortified  on  a  most  complete 
scale,  and  behind  them  are  vast  plains  which  the  spade  and 
magazine  rifle  can  turn  into  impregnable  fortresses.  From  these 
considerations  he  deduces  that  modern  wars  will  be  long  wars, 
and  must  necessarily  result  in  economic  exhaustion,  entailing 
starvation  and  the  dislocation  of  the  social  fabric.  At  best 
they  will  result  in  a  'kind  of  stalemate,'  with  no  decisive 


Despite  the  Times'1  preference  for  darkness,  that  Rosa 
Dartle  curiosity  of  the  minor  press,  which  is  usually  such  a 
curse,  became  a  blessing,  furnishing  me  with  opportunities 
of  pointing  the  Bloch  moral.  Thus  to  the  inquisitiveness 
of  the  Weekly  Dispatch,  as  to  what  had  most  struck  me 
during  the  war,  I  was  able  to  reply  (it  was  now  the  Spring 
of  1915)  that  it  was  the  continued  exemplification  of  Bloch's 
theories.  (What  most  struck  me  about  the  other  replies 
was  that  Lord  Derby,  of  the  immortal  recruiting  crusade, 
could  see  nothing  more  striking  in  the  most  gigantic 
phenomenon  in  human  history  than  "the  mutual  devotion 
of  officers  and  men.") 

At  the  end  of  the  first  year  of  war  the  same  newspaper 
habit  provided  another  opportunity  of  summing  up  the 
situation  and  the  prospect.  Under  date  of  August  4,  1915, 
I  wrote  in  The  Evening  Standard — and  was  again  alone  in 
the  view: 

"I  know  nothing  of  military  matters,  but  if  one  may  go  by 
Bloch — instead  of  Belloc — that  great  military  writer  proclaimed 
that  owing  to  the  possibilities  of  trench  warfare,  in  which  one 
man  can  hold  back  six,  a  war  between  two  modern  Powers, 
equally  organized  and  equipped,  can  only  result  in  stalemate. 

"This  deadlock  actually  exists  on  the  West  front,  where 
Germany's  only  gains  have  been  those  of  the  first  rush  against 
an  unprepared  foe.  It  does  not  exist  on  the  East  front,  because 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      57 

there  Germany  meets  inferior  organization,  insufficient  money 
and  munitions,  and  internal  discontent. 

"But  unless  Germany  builds  sufficient  submarines  to  destroy 
our  food  supply,  we  can  ultimately  wear  her  out,  though  at  a 
cost  so  terrible  that  I  should  personally  prefer  negotiating  her 
out  of  France  and  Belgium." 

Finally  in  1916  came  the  bold  and  brilliant  tribute  of 
Mr.  Wells  and  the  speech  in  Parliament  of  Mr.  Snowden, 
and  Bloch  may  be  said  to  have  arrived. 


XXXII 

When  his  book  was  first  published,  a  translation  of  one 
volume  was  issued  in  England  under  the  title  Is  War  Now 
Impossible  ?  And  this  of  course  became  the  legend  of  Bloch, 
who  was  also  supposed — and  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  fell 
into  the  error  only  the  other  day — to  be  a  moonshiny 
Pacifist.  What  Bloch  did  say  was  not  that  war  was  im- 
possible but  that  with  modern  munitions  and  trench 
methods  a  decisive  war  was  impossible,  so  far  as  mere 
military  operations  went.  In  this  sense  it  may  already 
be  said — to  adapt  Swinburne — 

"  Like  a  god  self -slain  on  his  own  strange  altar 
War  lies  dead." 

In  another  sense  no  doubt  Bloch  did  suggest  that  war  was 
impossible — in  the  sense  that  we  say  this  man  or  that 
woman  is  "impossible."  In  literal  truth  they  are,  alas! 
only  too  possible.  That  a  people  which  had  never  ceased 
to  chafe  at  paying  its  resourceless  septuagenarians  five 
shillings  a  week  should  carry  on  a  war  for  two  years  at  the 
cost  of  four  or  five  million  pounds  a  day  and  a  colossal  loss 
of  life,  property  and  shipping,  without  turning  a  hair — this 


58  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS   AND   A  PREFACE 

he  might  have  well  thought  impossible.  Even  I  who  have 
lived  to  see  it  feel  like  saying  "Credo  quia  impossibile  est." 
But  there  is  nothing  in  the  imperturbable  insanity  of  the 
human  race  to  refute  Bloch.  A  decisive  war  may  be  im- 
possible, but  there  is  nothing  to  prevent  two  Kilkenny  cats 
going  on  till  there  are  only  a  few  scraps  of  fur  left — "a 
fight  to  a  finish." 

Another  factor,  however,  comes  in — on  the  Bloch  sys- 
tem— to  modify  the  military  stalemate.  It  is  the  econom- 
ical attrition  by  which  one  or  the  other  will  be  worn  out  first. 
This  is  why  the  Huns  rage.  They  have  won  the  military 
part  of  the  land-battles — forty  years  of  gigantic  prepara- 
tion and  two  years  of  heroic  sacrifices  merited  no  less — and 
they  are  infuriated  at  our  taking  no  notice  of  their  score. 
They  want  war  to  be  a  game  with  the  definite  old-fashioned 
rules,  but  it  is  we  who  are  teaching  them  that  the  mere 
military  Kriegspiel  is  out-of-date.  And  it  is  because  they 
feel  that  though  they  can  go  no  farther,  they  may  fare 
worse,  that  they  have  long  been  anxious  for  a  peace.  This 
has  even  been  categorically  admitted — and  that  in  a  press 
under  censorship — by  the  greatest  organs  of  Germany. 
The  Frankfurter  Zeitung  said  at  the  end  of  this  February: 
"We  have  declared  before  all  the  world  our  readiness  for 
Peace."  "We  showed  our  enemies  our  will  for  Peace," 
said  the  Cologne  Gazette  about  the  same  period.  Even  as 
long  ago  as  last  Christmas  we  had  Herr  Ballin  lamenting 
the  destruction  of  Europe.  And  in  the  leading  Austrian 
newspaper,  the  Neue  Freie  Presse,  Count  Julius  Andrassy, 
the  former  Hungarian  Minister,  said  at  the  same  sacred 
season:  "The  proceedings  of  the  German  as  well  as  of  the 
Hungarian  Parliament  show  clearly  that  central  Europe  is 
ready  to  make  an  honorable  peace  on  the  strength  of  the 
present  military  situation.  But  our  enemies  hold  quite  a 
different  position." 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      59 

XXXIII 

To  hold  a  different  position  is  quite  legitimate  and  if 
Germany  cannot  now  get  out  of  the  trap  she  laid  for  others, 
nobody  can  deny  it  is  a  righteous  nemesis.  But  I  am  not 
at  all  sure  that  even  England  understands  the  transformed 
conditions  of  modern  warfare  and  the  full  strength  of  her 
position,  and  how  in  the  economic  factor  of  war  Germany 
stands  as  much  beaten  as  Belgium  does  in  the  military 
aspect.  England  too  has  not  entirely  given  up  the  German 
romantic  idea  of  Kriegspiel;  she  wants  before  making  peace 
also  to  have  an  old-fashioned  victory,  if  only  because — she 
says — Germany  would  understand  no  other.  But  Germany 
understands  well  enough.  Think  of  the  picture  given  us 
in  the  Matin  of  March  15  by  Senhor  Paes,  the  Portuguese 
Minister  who  had  just  been  recalled  from  Berlin  and  who, 
if  anyone,  should  be  in  a  position  to  gauge  the  facts: 

"I  have  been  witnessing  for  some  months  the  profound 
change  which  has  been  taking  place  in  certain  circles  which  I 
have  been  called  upon  to  frequent.  The  enthusiasm  was  great 
at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  The  war  was  regarded  as  a  sacred 
enterprise,  a  sort  of  emancipation  of  the  civilized  world.  For 
some  months  the  tone  has  been  growing  depressed.  To-day  in 
the  same  circles  where  the  bellicose  spirit  formerly  reigned  one 
sees  only  weariness  and  regrets.  The  idea  that  Germany  is 
the  nation  predestined  to  regenerate  humanity  has  also  disap- 
peared. Everywhere  the  Kaiser,  when  he  visits  hospitals,  has 
but  one  phrase,  always  the  same,  in  response  to  cries  and  com- 
plaints, "Ich  habe  das  nicht  gewollt"  (I  did  not  wish  it).  Now 
only  peace  is  spoken  of,  and  the  necessity  of  concluding  peace. 

"Note  that  these  are  circles  which  boast  before  the  foreigner. 
If  even  among  people  who  deliberately  wanted  war  one  hears 
such  talk  you  can  judge  what  is  thought  in  the  rest  of  the  Em- 
pire and  in  the  lower  classes  of  society."  x 

translated  in  the  Times,  March  16,  1916,  under  the  title  "Changed 
Berlin." 


60  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

Consider  too  the  message  recently  sent  from  Berlin  to 
Stockholm  as  to  the  plight  of  the  poorer  classes.  "  Hunger 
is,  generally  speaking,  the  most  powerful  of  the  enemies  of 
Berlin  and  Germany."  (Daily  Chronicle,  March  25.)  A 
neutral,  Hjalmer  Branting,  tells  Mr.  Harold  Begbie  in  the 
same  organ  that  the  nation  is  beginning  to  see  that  Force 
is  not  so  supreme  as  it  thought.  ''Everybody  in  the 
German  Empire  wants  peace,"  said  the  Volksblatte  simply, 
last  December — and  now  comes  the  German  Chancellor  and 
tells  us  he  expressed  his  readiness  on  December  gth  to  enter 
into  peace  negotiations  while  the  German  answer  to  Pres- 
ident Wilson's  ultimatum  goes  out  of  its  way  to  ingeminate 
peace! 

XXXIV 

I  am  not  unaware  of  the  new  forces  we  expect  to  be  able 
to  bring  into  play  soon,  both  native  and  allied,  nevertheless 
I  wish  I  could  feel  sure  that  even  a  military  victory — naval 
victories  are  rarely  decisive — will  bring  us  better  terms  than 
our  economic  victory  already  ensures  us.  Verdun  has 
illustrated  the  Bloch  theory  afresh.  With  the  most  colossal 
artillery  ever  concentrated  on  one  spot  and  with  super- 
human sacrifices  and  valor  Germany  has  at  the  moment 
of  writing  achieved  little  or  nothing.  People  are  able  to 
grasp  how  this  verifies  Bloch,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  see 
that  what  is  sauce  for  the  goose  is  sauce  for  the  gander. 
How  is  the  French  "  Grand  Offensive"  to  break  through, 
any  more  than  the  German?  The  French  author  of  The 
Epic  of  Dixmude  tells  us  how  "the  French  marines  held 
back  the  German  advance  at  the  beginning  of  the  war, 
when  the  odds  were  six  to  one."  Why  should  not  the  Ger- 
mans in  their  turn  do  the  same?  "At  the  first  battle  of 
Ypres,"  Mr.  Buchan  tells  us,  "  the  thin  Allied  line,  stretched 
to  the  last  limits  of  endurance,  beat  back  five  times  its 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      6 1 

weight  of  men  and  ten  times  its  weight  of  guns."  And 
again  I  ask,  what  guarantee  is  there  the  Germans  will  not 
do  as  much?  Mr.  Buchan  says,  indeed,  that  the  Germans 
under  such  circumstances  would  soon  lose  their  moral  but 
as  this  would  mean  the  complete  destruction  of  Germany, 
I  do  not  feel  so  persuaded  that  the  beast  at  bay  would  be 
less  dangerous  than  on  the  rampage. 

XXXV 

Again,  when  I  speak  of  an  economic  victory,  I  mean  by 
intelligent  anticipation.  With  equal  taps  turned  on  in  two 
barrels  a  firkin  and  a  hogshead,  one  need  not  wait  for  the 
result  to  know  which  will  be  depleted  first,  and  the  Germans 
are  clever  enough  not  to  desire  vulgar  demonstration.  But 
if  we  force  them  to  go  on  to  the  last  drop,  then  even  our 
own  tun  will  not  be  so  gloriously  overflowing. 

Adam  Smith,  when  it  was  pointed  out  to  him,  that  on  his 
theories  England  ought  to  have  been  ruined  years  ago, 
replied  that  a  nation  takes  a  deal  of  ruining.  No  less  an 
authority  than  the  Chairman  of  The  Merchants'  Trust 
has  warned  us  that  Germany  will  take  a  deal  of  ruining — 
after  all,  its  barrel  is  the  Great  Tun  of  Heidelberg: — 

"Pitt's  speeches  are  full  of  prognostications  of  her  financial 
collapse,  but  France  sustained  a  war  of  over  twenty  years,  and 
it  was  not  the  forty-five  milliards  of  assignats  that  finally  stopped 
her.  Theoretically,  a  country  can  carry  on  war  provided  produc- 
tion is  equal  to,  and  not  less  than,  consumption  by  the  Army,  plus 
consumption  by  the  civil  population.  So  Germany  might  feed, 
clothe,  and  munition  her  soldiers,  and  struggle  on  long  after 
financial  experts,  reasoning  from  the  depreciation  of  the  mark, 
had  decreed  her  collapse,  especially  now  that  she  is  in  possession 
of  the  industrial  district  of  the  Sambre  in  Belgium  and  France, 
and  of  Lodz  in  Poland,  which  has  raised  the  proportion  of  pro- 
ducers to  soldiers." 


62  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

It  should  be  added  that  Kitchener's  original  calculation 
that  the  Allies  could  increase  their  men  while  Germany's 
quantum  was  stationary,  has  been  falsified  by  the  accession 
of  Bulgaria  and  Turkey — which  are  much  more  additions 
to  the  German  army  than  Italy  is  to  the  Allied.  A  careful 
table  of  writings  goes  to  show  that  the  man-power  of  the 
enemy  is  relatively  15%  more  than  in  last  June  (U.  D.  C., 
January,  1916). 

Mr.  Buchan  himself  does  not  believe  "that  the  war  can 
end  by  mere  attrition,  by  merely  starving  Germany  into 
surrender."  He  thinks  Germany  will  make  a  great  naval 
dash.  But  if  this  fails — as  fail  it  must — and  Germany's 
informal  peace-overtures  are  still  neglected,  and  she  sees 
bankruptcy  and  dismemberment  facing  her,  then  I  cannot 
help  fearing  that  we  shall  see  worse  devils  raised  than 
Germany  has  yet  called  from  the  vasty  deep.  Tacitus 
tells  us — and  he  is  corroborated  by  St.  Ambrose — that  the 
ancient  Germans  had  such  a  passion  for  dicing  that  when 
everything  else  was  gone  they  set  their  liberties  and  persons 
on  the  last  throw  (extreme  ac  novissimo  jactu  de  libertate 
ac  de  cor  pore  contendanf).  Who  can  tell  to  what  desperate 
recourse  their  descendants  may  be  driven?  They  may 
prefer  to  go  down  righting  to  the  death.  Long  ago  the 
Kaiser  picturesquely  threatened  to  "arm  every  dog  and 
cat  in  the  Empire  ";  last  December  the  Berlin  Lokalanzeiger 
proposed  imposing  a  year  of  service  on  all  girls  at  eighteen, 
and  recently  Herr  Rudolph  Keller,  a  member  of  the  Austrian 
House  of  Deputies,  published  a  book  called  "War  Against 
Civilians!"  urging  the  starving  of  all  the  conquered  terri- 
tories. The  British  prisoners  and  interned  would  anyhow 
be  the  first  to  be  deprived  of  food.  And  could  we  complain? 
Could  we  complain  even  if  the  Zeppelins,  ceasing  to  try  for 
military  targets,  as  I  am  convinced  they  have  done  hitherto, 
should  establish  themselves  above  a  crowded  city-quarter 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      63 

and  rain  down  remorseless  death?  The  marvellous  British 
imperturbability  might  not  indeed  be  shaken,  and  the  bull- 
dog grip  is  .not  without  its  savage  sublimity,  and  even  its 
measure  of  justification  in  the  prior  "frightfulness"  of 
German  policy.  But  the  question  is,  can  we — even  though 
unalarmed — allow  such  horrors  and  holocausts  when  we 
have  only  to  move  a  finger  to  ensure — in  co-operation  of 
course  with  our  Allies — a  satisfactory  and  an  honorable 
peace? 

As  the  Swedish  Foreign  Minister,  Mr.  Knut  Wollenberg, 
said  to  Mr.  Begbie,  there  is  Europe  to  be  considered,  there 
is  civilization.  I  would  add  that  it  is  not  our  business  to 
exterminate  even  German  militarism,  much  less  Germany. 
If  Germany  prefers  that  soul-crushing  system,  it  is  her 
affair.  To  impose  our  Kultur  on  her  would  be  to  do  exactly 
what  we  accuse  her  of  desiring  to  do  with  other  nations.  Our 
business  is  simply  to  see  that  she  does  not  impose  her  Kultur 
on  us  whether  by  conquest  or  infection.  And  this  business 
it  is  by  no  means  certain  we  are  altogether  minding. 

XXXVI 

When  at  the  end  of  1914  I  wrote  to  the  Times  to  endorse 
Mr.  SchifPs  proposition  of  a  Conference,  a  mysterious  and 
menacing  "  Member  of  the  Vigilance  Committee"  hastened 
to  point  out  in  that  organ  how  "curious"  peace- talk  was 
"just  now  when  the  Germans  have  failed  to  take  Warsaw." 
Was  he  more  content,  I  wonder,  when  my  next  essay  at 
"peace- talk"  was  made  after  the  Germans  had  succeeded 
in  taking  Warsaw?  But  perhaps  this  vigilant  gentleman 
is  still  unaware  of  the  message  I  sent  to  a  Conference  held 
at  Caxton  Hall  on  "The  Pacifist  Philosophy  of  Life,"  on 
July  8th,  1915,  in  a  week  when  we  were  suffering  20,000 
casualties  a  week,  and  I  was  still  credulous  enough  to  think 


64  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

that  Christian  nations  might  not  be  altogether  deaf  to  the 
voice  of  Reason  and  Love: — 

"As  you  know  (I  wrote),  I  was  among  the  first  to  stipulate 
that  this  conference  should  not  be  a  *  Stop-the- war-meeting '  and 
therefore  I  feel  myself  all  the  more  entitled  to  protest  against 
the  Stop-the-peace-party. 

"From  various  German  quarters  peace  voices  seem  to  be 
raised  with  increasing  frequency  and  the  game  of  the  Stop-the- 
peace-party  is  to  pretend  that  to  give  ear  to  these  voices  is  pro- 
German.  That  is  poison  gas  tactics.  So  far  does  this  disregard 
the  decencies  of  discussion  that  it  is  probable  this  very  con- 
ference, founded  on  the  utter  loathing  and  detestation  of  the 
Prussian  ideal,  will  also  be  beclouded  as  pro-German. 

"A  rabbi  in  New  York  said  the  other  day,  'Nobody  could 
read  his  morning  paper  without  feeling  as  if  his  heart  would 
break.'  This  from  a  neutral. 

"What  must  we  feel,  who,  in  addition  to  the  spectacle  of 
half  the  world  murdering  and  impoverishing  itself,  see  the  flower 
of  England  massacred  and  mutilated  at  the  rate  of  twenty 
thousand  a  week,  and  the  whole  economic  future  of  generations 
to  come,  mortgaged  and  imperilled,  not  to  mention  the  trans- 
formation of  our  free  modern  civilization  into  a  killing  ma- 
chine on  the  Prussian  model. 

"Yet  when  we  express  the  faintest  desire  to  meet  any  over- 
tures that  may  arrest  this  spiritual  and  material  disintegration, 
our  conduct  is  so  unintelligible  forsooth  that  the  only  possible 
explanation  can  lie  in  our  being  pro-German. 

"When  King  Solomon  wished  to  cut  a  child  in  two,  it  was  the 
true  mother  that  surrendered  the  child  intact  to  the  false 
mother;  whether  those  who  prefer  the  slaughter  of  their  fellow 
citizens  to  negotiation  are  the  truer  patriots  is  a  question  that 
may  be  illumined  by  this  ancient  searchlight. 

"The  reason  alleged  by  the  stop- the  peace  party  for  ignoring 
overtures  through  German  channels  is  that  they  are  veiled  in- 
dications of  Germany's  weakness  and  distress.  But  what  better 
moment  for  dealing  with  the  devil  than  when  he  is  sick?  Surely 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR   NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      65 

it  is  not  proposed  to  take  up  peace  negotiations  at  the  moment 
when  Germany  is  carrying  all  before  her.  We  should  have  done 
better,  indeed,  to  encourage  these  overtures  while  Russia  was 
still  in  Galicia,  but  even  now  the  threads  of  negotiations  could 
probably  be  picked  up,  and  the  Germans  got  out  of  Belgium 
and  France  by  diplomacy,  at  least  as  quickly  and  effectively  as 
by  dynamite. 

"I  base  this  belief  on  the  German  gospel  of  Real  Politics. 
The  Germans  are  not  out  for  glory,  but  for  solidities.  They 
do  not  even  profess  to  fight  like  England  for  the  abstract  sanc- 
tity of  treaties  and  rights  of  nationalities. 

"It  is  very  significant,  that  saying  reported  of  Herr  Behrens, 
director  of  the  Dresden  Bank,  that  Germany  would  lose  even 
if  she  won.  The  shrewd  business  men  who  built  up  Prussia's 
marvellous  prosperity  and  now  see  their  mercantile  marine 
eliminated,  their  oversea  commerce  dead,  their  colonies  cap- 
tured, and  vast  markets  for  German  products  in  England, 
France,  Russia  and  Italy  destroyed,  will  not  indefinitely  endure 
this  orgie  of  militarism. 

"They  see,  even  if  we  do  not,  that  Jean  de  Bloch  was  a  true 
prophet,  and  that  modern  warfare  between  two  scientifically 
equipped  powers  can  yield  no  decisive  military  result. 

"These  Real  Politicians  understand,  moreover,  that  no  war 
indemnity,  even  in  ultimate  and  improbable  victory,  could 
possibly  compensate  them  for  the  widespread  boycott  that  every 
month  of  war  makes  more  certain  and  bitterer. 

"Surely  we  already  hold  enough  of  Germany's  colonies, 
merchantmen  and  invested  moneys  not  to  come  off  second  best 
in  any  negotiations. 

"I  hope,  therefore,  we  shall  not  lightly  reject  any  reason- 
able parley,  and  that  a  way  to  peace  may  yet  be  found  be- 
fore we  enter  on  the  second  year  of  the  most  murderous,  the 
most  gigantic,  the  most  barbarously  conducted  war  in  all 
history." 


66  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

XXXVII 

Nearly  a  year  has  passed  since  this  was  written,  but  is 
there  anything  in  the  purely  military  situation  calculated 
to  give  us  better  terms  than  we  could  then  have  secured, 
or  so  much  better  as  to  be  worth  the  immense  human  agony  and 
material  destruction?  For  this  is  the  real  question.  Our 
"  Grand  Offensive"  is  coming — it  is  nearly  eighteen  months 
since  Frenchmen  fresh  from  the  trenches  told  me  it  was 
"just  going  to  begin."  "//  n'est  plus  question"  they  said, 
"de  notre  entree  a  Berlin  mais  seulement  des  termes  de  paix 
que  nous  y  dicterons"  So  far  our  Grand  Advance  has  been 
only  in  taxes  and  prices.  But  even  if  their  cocksureness  is 
about  to  be  tardily  justified,  this  question  is  not  answered. 
Shall  we  indeed  ever  know  whether  the  final  terms  will  be 
so  much  better,  than  we  could  exact  this  very  day  by  ne- 
gotiation with  a  superficially  successful  but  commercially 
paralyzed,  food-depleted,  colony-despoiled  and  peace- 
clamoring  Germany,  as  to  have  been  worth  the  additional 
sacrifices?  Those  who  have  the  responsibility  for  this 
gigantic  gamble  are  not  to  be  envied.  But  they  ought  to 
bear  in  mind  the  sinister  currents  of  "patriotic"  opinion 
that  may  be  set  going  by  the  hundreds  of  factories  both  here 
and  in  Canada  which  our  indefatigable  Minister  of  Muni- 
tions has  called  into  being.1  And  surely  ' '  negotiation  "  must 
after  all  play  a  large  part  in  the  settlement.  Have  we  indeed 
done  our  duty  by  Belgium  in  not  long  ago  negotiating  the 
enemy  out  of  her  territory?  "The  cessation  of  the  war," 
writes  M.  Henri  Lambert,  the  famous  Belgium  economist, 
who  is  also  a  manufacturer,  "is  among  Belgium's  primary 

1  The  hectic  flush  of  prosperity  also  serves  to  keep  our  masses  quiet — they 
neither  understand  the  bad  times  that  may  come  as  after  the  Napoleonic 
wars  nor  make  provision  for  them.  "  Five  pounds  a  week!  It  does  take 
a  lot  of  spending,"  said  a  housewife  wearily.  In  Canning  Town  nearly 
every  baby — of  two  months  even — sports  a  ring. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      67 

interests,"  and  he  views  with  horror  the  prospect,  so  pleas- 
ing to  Englishmen,  of  the  evacuation  of  Belgium  by  force 
of  arms  and  not  by  negotiation.  "  Every  town,  village  and 
field  in  Belgium,"  would,  this  Belgian  says,  "be  transformed 
into  a  scene  of  indescribable  destruction  and  horrible  slaugh- 
ter." And  as  to  starving  out  the  Germans,  he  adds  "Does 
anybody  imagine  that  the  German  nation  will  consent  to 
be  starved  and  to  pick  up  the  crumbs  dropped  from  the 
table  of  the  Belgians,  themselves  fed  from  other  sources?" 
As  for  the  common  cry  that  South  Africa  would  never  give 
back  this  or  Australia  that,  it  may  be  true,  but  if  so  there 
is  an  end  to  the  British  Empire,  in  any  sense  such  as  Mr. 
Hughes  tried  to  drive  home  to  us.  It  would  simply  be  a 
set  of  allied  peoples,  without  inner  unity,  and  were  even  the 
Imperial  Council  established  that  Adam  Smith  already  pro- 
posed in  The  Wealth  of  Nations,  there  would  still  be  no  Im- 
perial organism. 

xxxvm 

This  is  a  matter  in  which  outsiders  can  see  more  clearly 
than  the  Cabinet,  just  as  it  was  left  for  the  late  Emil  Reich 
to  warn  England  in  1907  of  the  war  which  our  statesmen 
did  not  provide  against  even  in  1914.  So  too  the  present 
Cabinet,  engrossed  with  a  multitude  of  petty  details,  can 
perhaps  no  longer  see  the  tree  for  the  twigs.  When  the 
Boer  war  was  dragging  its  weary  length  along  Lord  Rose- 
bery  created  a  sensation  by  suggesting  in  a  speech  that 
peace  might  grow  out  of  "a  casual  conversation  in  an  inn." 
Is  there  no  way  of  starting  negotiations  without  committing 
ourselves?  Does  the  levity  of  war-politics  go  so  far  as  to 
provide  no  instrument  or  device  for  such  a  situation  as  the 
present?  One  suggestion,  made  by  me,  in  the  New  States- 
man of  November  n,  1915,  and  of  course  wholly  neg- 
lected, may  perhaps  be  usefully  reprinted  here.  The 


68  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

subject  arose  through  a  controversy  on  "Commemorating 
Miss  Cavell." 

"With  all  deference  to  Mr.  Shaw,  and  every  desire  that  the 
sex  Miss  Cavell  adorned  shall  be  instantly  enfranchised,  I 
cannot  feel  sure  that  here  lies  the  most  appropriate  'way  in 
which  we  can  pay  our  debt  to  her  and  test  the  sincerity  of  her 
loudest  champions.'  The  lesson  of  her  life — and  death — is 
surely  larger  than  the  vote,  is  nothing  less  than  'Patriotism  is 
not  enough.'  She  desired  to  die  at  peace  even  with  her  execu- 
tioners, and  therefore  we  must  prepare  to  live  at  peace  with 
them. 

"Even  from  to-day's  Daily  Express  I  gather  that  Germany — 
ringed  round  by  our  victorious  Fleet — is  sick  of  the  war,  and 
resembles  'a  war-maniac  whose  blood  has  been  drained.'  In 
the  current  number  of  War  £r  Peace  I  find  a  German  manifesto 
circulated  last  June  by  the  Bund  Neues  Vaterland,  urging  that 
the  Allies  cannot  be  crushed,  and  that  even  if  Belgium  could 
be  annexed,  it  would  only  create  an  appalling  era  of  anti- 
German  militarism.  Months  ago  I  read  another  manifesto, 
signed  by  a  hundred  and  fifty  of  the  greatest  names  in  Germany, 
repudiating  Bernhardi,  and  declaring:  'We  Germans  have  never 
grudged  our  Anglo-Saxon  blood-relations  their  world-encircling 
power,'  and  that  the  dread  of  Germany's  designs  was  a  'de- 
lusion,' a  'disastrous  misunderstanding.' 

"As  one  who  shared  this  'delusion,'  and  even  incorporated 
it  in  a  play,  I  feel  I  cannot  better  honor  Miss  Cavell's  memory 
than  by  lending  ear — however  incredulous — to  the  hundred 
and  fifty  German  thinkers  and  creators,  for  even  more  dis- 
astrous than  the  original  misunderstanding  would  be  to  con- 
tinue it  at  the  cost  of  incalculable  suffering  per  minute.  (In 
to-day's  Times  there  are  nearly  two  close-printed  pages  in  tiny 
type  of  British  casualties  alone.)  But  if  one  suggests  opening 
peace  negotiations  when  Germany  is  winning,  one  is  a  coward 
and  a  traitor;  and  if  one  suggests  it  when  Germany  is  not  win- 
ning, one  is  still  more  clearly  'pro-German.'  By  these  black- 
guardly tactics — repeated  in  every  war — every  approach  to 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      69 

sanity  is  blocked  with  barbed  wire.    The  trouble  is  that  a  dis- 
advantage does  lie  with  the  side  that  begins  the  peace  talk. 

"It  appears,  therefore,  that  what  is  wanted  in  future  wars  is 
a  monthly  meeting  or  even  a  continuous  intercourse  of  the 
rival  diplomatists  to  discuss,  quite  without  prejudice,  the  ever- 
changing  military  situation.  Thus  at  any  and  every  meeting 
they  could  slide  into  discussing  peace  conditions  without  either 
side  being  compromised  by  having  called  the  conference.  Let 
Miss  Cavell's  countrymen  create  even  now  this  missing  ma- 
chinery. Let  the  rival  diplomatists  begin  meeting,  not  to  talk 
peace,  but  to  prepare  the  atmosphere  in  which  it  may  become 
negotiable  as  the  military  situation  develops.  En  attendant 
they  can  discuss  such  subjects  as  the  exchange  and  treatment 
of  prisoners.  To  end  as  I  began — with  a  quotation  from  Mr. 
Shaw — '  If  this  proposal  is  received  in  dead  silence  I  shall  know 
that  Edith  Cavell's  sacrifice  has  been  rejected  by  her  country.' " 


XXXIX 

Nobody  is  more  conscious  than  I  what  large  areas  of  the 
spiritual  war-zone  are  left  untouched  here.  There  is  for 
example  a  chapter  to  be  written  on  the  results  of  the  war 
upon  the  relations  between  the  white  and  colored  races,  but 
the  fog  of  war  lies  too  thickly  about  this  war-zone  for  any 
real  survey  at  present.  I  have  contented  myself  with  re- 
producing my  old  speech  in  honor  of  Mr.  Morel,  made  in 
the  days  when  his  services  in  the  Congo  were  acknowledged 
as  a  national  glory,  and  Lord  Cromer,  Sir  Arthur  Conan 
Doyle  and  others  partook  in  a  public  presentation  to  him. 
I  could  not  re-read  this  speech  without  thinking  of  Old 
Testament  dooms,  though  at  the  same  time  I  rejoiced  that 
King  Albert  has  overlaid  the  black  record  of  King  Leopold 
and  his  henchmen  by  a  nobly-illuminated  page,  and  that 
while  Germany  has  sunk  into  a  Great  Scourge,  Belgium 
purged  by  pity  and  terror  has  risen  into  a  Great  Power,  of 


70  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

which  even  England  can  say,  in  the  words  of  Thomson's 
Britain: 

"  In  spite  of  raging  universal  sway, 
And  raging  seas  repress'd,  the  Belgic  States, 
My  bulwark  on  the  Continent  arose." 

Another  chapter — or  book — would  deal  with  the  effects 
on  labor,  apart  from  the  woman  question.  Such  a  study 
has  indeed  been  begun  by  Mr.  G.  D.  H.  Cole,  under  the 
title  Labor  in  War  Time,  but  it  does  not  go  beyond  the 
passage  of  the  Munitions  Act,  where  the  real  excitement 
begins.  I  am  not  surprised  to  find  him  saying  "  It  is  scandal- 
ous that  a  measure  vitally  affecting  the  whole  position  of 
Labor  should  have  been  hurried  through  at  a  moment's 
notice  ...  it  is  still  more  a  scandal  that  the  Trade  Union 
leaders  and  the  Labor  party  should  have  acquiesced  in  it." 
Exactly  what  I  have  found  all  along  the  line — no  real  back- 
bone of  liberty  in  the  Briton,  though  plenty  of  fighting 
backbone.  I  note  that  Mr.  Cole  ends  his  book  with  a  grave 
prophecy  that  "the  coming  of  peace  between  nations  means 
the  coming  of  war  between  classes."  This  I  am  not  in  a 
position  to  refute,  for  if  I  have  avoided  this  subject  it  is 
because  I  have  limited  myself  to  those  regions  of  the  war- 
zone  in  which  I  have  been  personally  a  fighter.  On  the  move- 
ments for  the  emancipation  of  woman,  for  the  rights  and 
redintegration  of  the  Jews,  for  the  amelioration  of  our 
drama,  for  the  freedom  of  emigration  and  the  maintenance 
of  the  American  ideal,  for  the  classification  of  creeds,  for 
human  brotherhood  and  Peace,  I  can  contribute  first- 
hand impressions  of  the  combat,  but  in  the  war-zone  of 
labor  I  am  a  mere  spectator  to  whom  the  Trade  Unionists 
and  the  Capitalists  appear  equal  sinners  against  a  true 
human  relation.  I  incline  nevertheless  to  the  more  optimis- 
tic view  of  Mr.  Buchan,  that: — 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      71 

"If  we  can  carry  that  great  brotherhood  of  the  trenches 
into  the  years  of  peace,  and  make  a  cleaner  and  a  better  and 
a  juster  England,  where  class  hatred  will  abate  because  class 
selfishness  has  gone,  then,  with  the  grace  of  God,  this  war  may 
yet  rank  as  one  of  the  happiest  events  in  our  history." 

I  trust  that  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  now  the  risen  hope  of 
the  stern  and  unbending  Tories,  will  use  his  new  prestige 
with  the  Dukes  to  rob  hen-roosts  with  renewed  vigor.  The 
war  has  simply  stripped  the  propertied  classes  of  their  last 
rag  of  mendacity — we  who  are  able  to  pay  twelve  million 
pounds  every  two  and  a  half  days  of  war  never  ceased  to 
storm  and  whine  alternately  at  paying  twelve  millions  every 
365  days  for  the  Old  Age  Pensions.  The  new  war-pensions 
will  increase  the  benefited  circulation  of  other  people's 
money  through  the  countryside.  Mr.  Hughes 1  dit  son 
fait  a  VAngleterre  when  he  said: 

"The  men  of  Britain  must  face  the  facts.  You  cannot  have 
a  great  nation  when  the  base  is  rotten  .  .  .  when  twelve  mil- 
lions of  people  are  on  the  verge  of  starvation.  .  .  .  What 
must  Britain  do  to  be  saved?  I  say  she  must  be  born  again. 
There  can  be  no  peace  until  we  have  purged  the  world  of  the 
monstrous  cancer  which  is  eating  out  the  vitals  of  civilization." 

But  it  is  a  pity  that  the  man  from  Australia — who  would 
have  scarcely  found  a  career  if  he  had  stayed  in  England — 
should  have  added  words  to  this  which  imply  that  the 
"cancer"  is  not  poverty  as  one  would  imagine,  but  Ger- 
many, and  that  the  moral  of  the  message  should  end  in  the 
bathos  of  national  security: 

"A  community  which  by  its  very  system  breeds  sexual  im- 
morality, which  spreads  poverty  in  ever-widening  circles,  and 
which  degrades  masses  of  its  population  to  a  level  lower  than 
1  Speech  at  Cardiff,  March  24,  1916. 


72  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND   A  PREFACE 

that  of  the  animals,  I  am  quite  sure  that  such  a  community  is 
destined  to  be  wiped  out,  to  die,  to  be  swept  out  of  existence. 
There  is  no  room  in  Nature  for  such  a  community."  l 

This  is  mere  rhetoric.  There  is  plenty  of  room  in  nature 
for  a  community  which  by  degrading  its  masses  to  the 
level  of  animals,  enriches  itself  with  beasts  of  burden.  The 
greatness  of  England  has  long  been  built  upon  its  docks, 
where  it  is  a  convenience  to  have  a  surplusage  of  unskilled 
labor  to  increase  competition  and  drive  down  its  price. 
The  nemesis  comes  indeed  when  the  number  refuses  sud- 
denly to  rise  to  a  man  and  a  patriot,  and  your  ships  are 
left  unloaded  or  undischarged  in  the  greatest  crisis  of  your 
destinies.  But  with  a  cornucopia  of  savings,  you  may 
muddle  through  almost  anything.  No,  the  question  is 
not  of  the  nation's  safety  but  of  the  reality  of  its  greatness. 
Let  us  not  mix  up  the  re-birth,  the  re-organization  of  Eng- 
land, with  the  question  of  crushing  Germany.  A  fig  for 
"the  cancer  of  German  trade" — it  is  the  cancer  of  English 
poverty  that  must  be  cut  out.  Cutting  out  the  other  can- 
cer indeed  will  only  increase  your  own,  as  Mr.  J.  M.  Robert- 
son has  convincingly  shown.2  This  commercial  isolation 
of  Germany  is  not  even  possible.  Even  at  the  height  of 
the  combat  England  and  Russia  are  compelled  to  buy  from 
Germany — business  men  tell  me — each  closing  a  politic 
eye.  It  may  be  well  enough  to  say  that  such  necessities 
of  life — or  death — must  never  again  be  unproduced  at 
home  but  the  Rhadamanthine  rodomontade  of  boycotting 
a  hundred  million  customers  reminds  me  of  the  Talmud- 
saying  that  ten  enemies  cannot  do  a  man  the  harm  he  can 
do  himself. 

Even  amid  the  ghastliness  of  the  war  we  have  been  able 

1  Interview  by  Harold  Begbie,  Daily  Chronicle,  March  15,  1916. 

2  Fiscal  Policy  after  the  War. 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA   FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      73 

to  spare  a  shudder  for  the  strange  seafaring  story  of  the 
Dutch  lugger  that  was  "  picked  up  derelict  with  ten  men 
on  board  all  mad,  who  stated  that  they  had  killed  their 
shipmates  and  tossed  the  bodies  into  the  sea  because  the 
men  were  possessed  of  devils."  If  from  one  aspect  this 
vessel  seems  an  epitome  of  Europe,  if  there  is  no  belligerent 
whose  record  is  wholly  rational — if  at  best  it  is  a  tale  of 
dishonors  divided — there  is  only  one  way  of  escaping  from 
the  horror  which  comes  over  men  when  they  realize  what 
they  have  done  in  their  madness — it  is  by  insisting  that 
from  their  very  misdeed  virtue  shall  spring.  We  must  see 
to  it  that  out  of  all  this  dung  a  finer  civilization  shall  flower. 
Humanity,  caught  in  this  terrible  machinery  of  war,  twisted 
and  tortured,  has  yet  shown  itself  full  of  glorious  qualities 
—incredibly  brave,  beautifully  kind,  angelically  patient, 
heroically  devoted,  magnificently  bountiful.  Could  all 
these  sweet  bells  be  only  jangled  into  the  savage  discord 
of  war — can  they  not  be  accorded  into  the  music  of  a  noble 
civilization?  This  war  has  proved  that  there  is  no  height 
or  depth  of  vision  but  human  nature  is  adequate  to  make 
it  real.  It  is  only  because  evil  is  so  energetically  organized 
against  what  Wordsworth  called  "the  vacillating  incon- 
sistent good"  that  it  is  so  monotonously — and  so  properly 
— victorious.  If  only  this  inefficiency  of  the  good  could 
be  exchanged  for  the  efficiency  which  Germany  has  dis- 
played for  evil.  "Debout  les  morts!"  cried  the  wounded 
French  sergeant  in  one  of  the  greatest  stories  that  have 
come  to  us  from  the  trenches,  as  he  rallied  his  dead  and 
dying  to  repulse  an  assault.  We  too  have  long  been  dead, 
we  sons  of  the  cities — deaf  to  their  groanings  and  blind 
to  their  tears — but  we  too  can  rise  at  the  call  and  make  an- 
other fight  for  civilization  in  a  renewed  WAR  FOR  THE 
WORLD. 


74  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

XL 

No  survey,  however  cursory,  of  the  spiritual  war-zone 
would  be  complete  without  a  mention  of  the  struggle  of 
the  Jew  to  get  or  preserve  his  civil  rights.  This  struggle 
is  important  less  for  the  Jew's  sake  than  the  world's  sake, 
inasmuch  as  the  position  of  minorities  is  the  high-water 
mark  of  civilization.  Hence  the  space  given  in  this  book 
to  Russia  which  happens  to  hold  six  million  Jews  or  half 
the  existing  race.  Their  sufferings  in  the  physical  war  are 
but  adumbrated  here,  nor,  though  greater  than  those  of 
any  other  race  except  the  Armenians  would  they  be  men- 
tioned at  all  in  such  a  period  of  universal  sufferings  were 
it  not  that  most  of  the  misery  is  not  the  dread  necessity  of 
war  but  a  literal  luxury  of  woe  which  Russian  Militarismus 
has  permitted  itself  to  enjoy. 

Even  in  England  we  have  a  miniature  anti-Semitic  cam- 
paign, and  the  ground  won  by  Reason  and  Love  is  again 
being  sapped  by  the  tireless  tides  of  Unreason  and  Hate. 
In  his  history  of  The  Rise  and  Influence  of  Rationalism, 
Lecky  devoted  a  chapter  of  one  hundred  and  thirty  pages 
to  "The  Secularization  of  Politics,"  treating  it  correctly 
as  an  enhancement  and  not  an  impairment  of  the  essential 
principles  of  Christianity.  But  for  the  anti-Semites — after 
Treitschke — all  this  is  to  be  undone.  It  is  not  only  in 
Germany  that — as  Heine  told  the  French — the  Middle 
Age  fails  to  lie  mouldering  (liegt  nicht  vermodert  im  Grabe). 
"Ever  and  anon  it  is  revived  by  an  evil  spirit  and  comes 
out  among  us  in  clear  broad  daylight  and  sucks  the  red 
life  from  our  breast." 

The  reactionary  movement  here  as  everywhere  gathers 
round  a  Catholic  and  ultra-nationalist  nucleus.  It  may 
seem  odd  that  when  so  many  Jews  are  giving  high  public 
service  or  sealing  their  loyalty  with  their  blood  that  anti- 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      75 

Semitism  should  be  able  to  persist,  but  there  is  always 
enough  stupidity,  rancor,  ignorance,  envy  and  mediaeval 
prejudice  surviving  to  provide  a  moderate  career  for  a 
limited  band  of  Jew-baiters.  So  far  they  are  to  be  con- 
gratulated that  the  illogic  of  the  armchair  has  not  trans- 
lated itself  into  the  crude  criminality  of  the  market-place. 
The  organ  of  the  movement  styles  itself  The  New  Witness.1 
Its  conductors  who  are  understood  to  be  Roman  Catholics 
would  do  better  to  call  it  The  False  Witness  and  recapitu- 
late its  contents  in  the  confessional. 

On  the  intellectual  side  the  movement  is  not  strong  ex- 
cept in  names.  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  has  tried  to  give 
it  an  intellectual  basis  by  the  allegation  that  the  Jew's 
intellect  is  so  disruptive  and  sceptical.  The  Jew  is  even 
capable,  he  says,  of  urging  that  in  some  other  planet  two 
and  two  may  perhaps  make  five.  One  always  understood 
that  the  crime  of  the  Jew  lay  precisely  in  the  dogmatism 
of  his  arithmetic  in  the  realm  of  theology,  but  as  a 
matter  of  fact  the  scepticism  in  question  was  most  de- 
structively displayed  by  Mr.  Chesterton's  own  semi- 
sympathizer,  Mr.  H.  G.  Wells,  in  his  famous  discourse 
on  "Scepticism  of  the  Instrument,"  which  now  figures  as 
an  appendix  to  his  Modern  Utopia.  Not  to  mention 
Pyrrha. 

A  minor  fatuity  of  this  school  is  to  refuse  the  name 
" European"  to  the  Jew,  as  if  the  overwhelming  bulk  of 

1  This  organ  is  supplemented  by  the  Catholic  Herald  and  finds  a  subtle  sup- 
port hi  the  Times  which  attributes  to  Jews  or  Jewish  influence  every  enemy 
manoeuvre,  every  hostile  newspaper,  while  neglecting  to  accentuate  the 
Jewishness  of  the  numerous  pro-English  influences.  In  its  issue  of  March  17, 
1916,  for  example,  we  read  headlines:  "American  Capital  for  Rand  Mines," 
"American  instead  of  German  Financing,"  whereas  the  whole  affair  both 
in  the  Rand  and  in  the  States  appears  from  the  names  to  be  in  the  hands  of 
Jews.  Per  contra,  a  column  headed  "Jewish  Finance  and  Turkey"  contains 
nothing  but  the  views  of  the  Berliner  Tageblatt  on  the  fall  of  Erzeroum! 
(Times,  February  25,  1916.) 


76  SOME  PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

the  British  Empire  did  not  lie  outside  Europe,  or  as  if  all 
its  religions  had  not  been  made  in  Asia. or  Africa. 

I  remember  Sir  Charles  Waldstein  writing  to  the  Times 
to  protest  against  the  Jews  being  thus  classified  as  non- 
European,  but  as  he  himself  was  born  in  New  York,  it 
seemed  a  somewhat  Irish  indignation,  especially  as  he 
went  on  to  say  that  the  Jews  had  co-operated  with  the 
Greeks  to  build  up  the  European  mind.  For  if  so,  then  the 
European  mind  is  semi-Asiatic. 

The  British  Empire,  the  greatest  motley  of  creeds,  races 
and  colors,  that  has  ever  been  brought  under  one  standard 
of  justice — a  phenomenon  in  itself,  as  majestic  as  the  Papal 
blessing  urbi  et  orbi — lives  by  the  harmonization  of  its 
measureless  diversity,  and  the  attempt  of  a  little  Catholic 
clique — till  lately  itself  under  oppression — to  monopolize 
British  patriotism  and  represent  itself  as  the  sole  true- 
born-Englishmanry  could  only  be  dealt  with  adequately 
by  the  flail  of  a  Defoe.  This  clique  understands  neither 
Christianity,  which  it  crucifies,  nor  the  British  Empire, 
which  it  caricatures. 

In  so  far  as  its  members  have  any  real  religion,  they  are 
pre-Pauline  Jews;  too  narrow  even  in  their  nationalism  to 
remember  the  Mosaic  Commandment  that  there  is  one 
law  for  the  homeborn  and  the  stranger.  But  the  pre- 
Pauline  Jews  possessed  only  a  toy  kingdom,  and  that  mostly 
under  alien  suzerainty;  they  did  not  straggle  over  a  fifth 
of  the  globe,  and  set  up  pleasure  or  trading  quarters  in 
the  other  four-fifths.  For  members  of  this  all-conquering 
people  to  resent  the  immigration  of  a  race  devoid  of  even 
a  single  square  inch  of  national  soil  is  an  insolence  describ- 
able  only  as  v/3pis  and  challenging  like  it  a  divine  nemesis. 

So  far  goes  the  arrogance  of  this  little  group  that  it  still 
boasts  of  its  "  hospitality "  even  to  British-born  Jews. 
And  even  other  Englishmen,  free  from  anti-Semitism,  are 


WITH  AN  APOLOGIA  FOR  NOT  BEING  PRO-GERMAN      77 

still  so  caddishly  conscious  of  their  legislative  magnanimity 
that  they  appear  to  expect  the  enfranchised  Jew  to  endorse 
every  passing  mood  of  the  majority,  and  to  go  about— 
to  the  third  and  fourth  generation — exuding  gratitude, 
like  a  Uriah  Heep. 

"  With  bated  breath  and  whispering  humbleness." 

That  were  indeed  to  have  sold  one's  birthright  for  a  mess 
of  pottage.  The  Jew  cannot  surrender  even  his  right  to 
criticise  Christianity — indeed  to  criticise  it  is  the  sole 
raison  d'etre  of  his  separateness.  And  he  is  not  less  quali- 
fied for  criticising  it — as  the  Christian  curiously  imagines — 
but  more  qualified  by  the  fact  of  his  racial  affinity  with 
its  group  of  founders.  For  my  own  part  I  hold  that  the 
highest  patriotic  service  a  writer  can  render  to  the  country 
of  his  birth  is  to  offer  it  his  truest  thinking  and  his  deepest 
race-heritage,  and  to  try  to  make  it  worthier  of  his  love. 
I  take  my  definition  of  patriotism  not  from  those  who 
illustrate  Dr.  Johnson's  l  but  from  those  who  say  with 
Jaures:  "La  vraie  formule  du  patriotisme,  c'est  le  droit 
egal  de  toutes  les  patries  a  la  liberte  et  a  la  justice,  c'est 
le  devoir  pour  tout  citoyen  d'accroltre  en  sa  patrie  les 
forces  de  liberte  et  de  justice." 

Accusations  of  anti-Britishism  would  leave  my  withers 
less  unwrung,  did  I  not  observe  that  Cabinet  Ministers, 
models  of  propriety,  patriotism  and  all-British  ideals,  fare 

1  "At  Portsmouth  Police  Court  on  Saturday  Herbert  Cole,  described  as 
an  author  and  publisher,  was  charged  under  the  Vagrancy  Act  with  attempt- 
ing to  procure  charitable  contributions  by  fraud.  .  .  . 

"The  evidence  was  that  the  prisoner  started  what  he  described  as  'The 
Patriots'  League,'  with  himself  as  secretary.  During  1915  prisoner  had 
paid  £628  into  his  bank  account.  .  .  . 

"The  prisoner  was  sentenced  to  three  months'  imprisonment  and  ordered 
to  pay  £25  towards  the  costs  of  the  prosecution."  (Times,  December  6. 
1915-) 


78  SOME   PROGNOSTICATIONS  AND  A  PREFACE 

no  better  at  the  hands  of  the  anti-Semites  than  my  un- 
chastened  Semitic  self. 


XLI 

One  word  more  and  I  have  begun.  Some  years  ago 
"Max"  published  a  caricature  of  our  men  of  letters,  all 
engaged  in  tub-thumping  instead  presumably  of  cultivating 
literature  proper  in  reclusive  Italian  villas.  The  notion 
that  literature  is  a  hothouse  flower  seems  to  belong  entirely 
to  our  own  generation  and  our  own  island,  and  was  perhaps 
fostered  by  the  fact  that  the  two  greatest  poets  of  the 
Victorian  era  had  the  air  of  being  unable  to  write  in  prose. 
On  the  Continent  literature  has  never  been  divorced  from 
politics.  Nor  was  it  in  the  virile  ages  of  English  literature. 
Defoe's  passion  for  liberty  led  him  to  gaol  and  the  pillory; 
Swift's  pamphlet  On  the  Conduct  of  the  Allies  produced 
the  Peace  of  Utrecht  (the  preliminaries  of  which  were  more- 
over negotiated  by  the  poet,  Prior).  It  was  to  silence 
Fielding's  pasquinades  that  Walpole  instituted  our  dramatic 
censorship.  But  why  multiply  instances  when  the  greatest 
academic  artist  in  English  literature — Milton — was  also 
the  most  passionate  champion  of  English  liberty,  some  of 
whose  books  were  publicly  burnt  by  the  hangman? 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

THE  WAR  DEVIL 

(From  the  Daily  Chronicle,  April  21,  1913) 

"  First  Moloch,  horrid  thing,  besmear'd  with  blood 
Of  human  sacrifice,  and  parents'  tears, 
Though  for  the  noise  of  drums  and  timbrels  loud 
Their  children's  cries  unheard,  that  passed  through  fire 
To  his  grim  idol." — Paradise  Lost,  Book  I. 


Mr.  Winston  Churchill  has  more  than  once,  in  phrases 
stamped  with  genius,  expressed  his  sense  of  the  folly  and 
futility  of  the  armaments  which  he  is  doomed  to  organize 
and  amplify — against  a  practically  equal  counter-weight  on 
the  opposition  side.1  Nor  is  the  other  side  backward  in 
handsome  acknowledgments  of  futility  and  folly.  And  yet, 
as  in  a  ghastly  trance,  conscious  of  everything,  but  unable  to 
stir  hand  or  foot,  the  peoples  of  Europe  see  themselves 
slowly  crushed  under  masses  of  iron  and  steel,  annually 
growing  more  monstrous  and  gigantic.  When  the  twentieth 
century  opened,  England's  naval  expenditure  was  some  30 

1  "Une  maladie  nouvelle  s'est  r6pandue  en  Europe;  elle  a  saisi  nos  princes, 
et  leur  fait  entretenir  un  nombre  d6sordonn6  de  troupes.  Elle  a  ses  re- 
doublements,  et  elle  devient  ne"cessairement  contagieuse;  car,  sitdt  qu'un 
Etat  augmente  ce  qu'il  appelle  ses  troupes,  les  autres  soudain  augmentent  les 
leurs:  de  facon  qu'on  ne  gagne  rien  par  li  que  la  ruine  commune.  Chaque 
monarque  tient  sur  pied  toutes  les  arm6es  qu'il  pourroit  avoir  si  ses  peuples 
e*toient  en  danger  d'etre  extermine's;  et  on  nomme  paix  cet  6tat  d'effort  de 
tous  centre  tous."  (Montesquieu,  De  L'Esprit  des  Lois,  Book  xiii,  cap.  17.) 

79 


8o  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

millions;  it  is  now  approaching  50  millions.  Our  education 
budget  is  just  about  one-fourth  of  our  fighting  budget. 
Civilization,  like  Laocoon,  is  strangling  in  the  coils  of  ser- 
pents, but  of  serpents  it  has  itself  hatched  from  the  precious 
eggs  of  pedigree  cockatrices.  Hitherto,  these  serpents,  as 
in  the  Trojan  legend,  were  two — a  land-serpent  and  a  sea- 
serpent.  But  we  have  now  generated  an  air-serpent,  fiercer 
than  the  fabled  gryphon,  direr  than  the  chimaera  whose 
breath  was  fire.  And  while  Laocoon  strove  to  throttle  his 
serpents,  we  are  fatally  compelled  to  fatten  ours,  to 
strengthen  the  sinister  muscles  that  enfold  us,  to  inject 
into  the  fangs  the  venom  that  beslavers  us.  Once  a  year, 
in  a  desperate  effort  to  disentwine  himself,  Mr.  Churchill 
offers  a  truce,  some  reduction  of  armaments,  a  Sabbatical 
year.  But  it  is  a  forlorn  hope.  Germany  can  no  more 
disentangle  herself  than  England.  The  workmen  are  en- 
gaged, the  dockyards  must  be  fed.  Nations  are  made 
for  navies,  not  navies  for  nations.  Would  you  throw  out 
of  gear  the  great  industry  of  Death — that  staple  of  Life! 
Even  as  he  waves  the  white  flag,  Mr.  Churchill  is  con- 
strained to  cry,  in  the  spirit  of  another  fool  of  Fate: 

"  Build  on— no  bluff! 
And  damn'd  be  he  who  first  cries,  'Hold,  enough!'  " 

Were  our  drama  alive,  this  mysterious  modern  Fate,  im- 
palpable and  ineluctable,  against  whose  invisible  mesh  our 
up-to-date  Winston  feels  himself  vainly  beating,  would  have 
replaced  the  unreal  movement  of  destiny  in  the  Greek 
tragedies  or  the  obsolete  supernatural  machinery  of  the 
Shakespearean  theatre.  Imaginatively  incarnated,  this 
subtly-pervasive  Necessity  would  appear  as  a  sort  of  War 
Devil,  chuckling  with  grim  humor  as  he  watches  the  wri th- 
ings of  his  minions  and  marionettes — statesmen  primed 
with  culture  and  Christianity,  their  lips  chanting  the  praises 


THE   WAR  DEVIL  8 1 

of  peace,  yet  condemned  by  their  mocking  master  to  add 
brick  after  brick  to  the  Temple  of  Apollyon,  and  to  build 
not  God's  Kingdom  on  Earth  but  the  Devil's. 

II 

Blessed  are  the  peacemakers  runs  the  War  Devil's 
Beatitude.  But  even  his  minions  and  marionettes  must 
observe  that  the  race  is  not  to  the  swift,  nor  the  battle  to 
the  strong.  Size  is  not  safety.  The  nation  whose  9,000 
sea-dogs,  aided  by  the  elements,  scattered  the  28,000  Span- 
iards of  the  Armada,  should  least  of  all  put  its  faith  in 
automatic  arithmetic.  One  would  imagine  that  Germany 
and  England  could  play  the  war-game  like  cards,  that  Mr. 
Churchill  could  deal  a  destroyer  and  be  trumped  by  a 
Zeppelin,  that  Admiral  von  Tirpitz  could  lay  down  a  2o-knot 
cruiser  to  be  taken  by  a  30-knot  cruiser,  or  that  England 
has  only  to  show  a  sufficient  hand  of  Super-Dreadnoughts 
for  Germany  to  cry,  "I  pass!"  One  Nelson  may  equal  a 
dozen  Dreadnoughts.  Yet  I  am  not  aware  that  the  neces- 
sity of  Nelsons,  or  of  the  brain-power  standard,  exercises 
either  the  Admiralty  or  the  music-halls.  That  poor  little 
schoolboy  who  killed  himself  the  other  day  because  he  was 
refused  admission  to  the  Navy  on  the  ground  he  was  short- 
sighted in  one  eye — how  he  reminds  us  that  the  Nelson  of 
the  Nile  and  Trafalgar  had  only  one  eye  altogether !  Never, 
said  the  principal  of  his  college,  had  he  given  a  boy  "such  a 
consummately  admirable  character!"  Possibly  an  embryo 
Nelson — yet  lost  to  the  nation  on  the  same  automatic  sys- 
tem. And  where  in  this  ever-evolving  programme  to  stop? 
In  a  century  we  shall  have  at  this  rate  some  500  warships — 
the  majority,  I  suppose,  Hyper-Ultra-Trans-Super-Dread- 
noughts. Who  is  to  man  them?  Will  Englishmen  be  all  at 
sea,  reverted  to  a  race  of  searovers,  like  their  Danish  fore- 


82  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

fathers?  But  more  possibly  water-ships  will  be  as  obsolete 
as  stagecoaches.  Armageddon  will  be  in  the  air  (where, 
indeed,  it  has  been  since  my  childhood). 

in 

In  this  nightmare  of  civilization,  two  comforting  theories 
have  found  eager  ears.  M.  Bloch  taught  that  war  is  now 
impossible,  since  it  can  only  result  in  stalemate.  Mr. 
Norman  Angell  teaches  that  war  is  economically  unsound, 
that  it  cannot  pay.  But  it  would  now  seem  that  it  is  peace 
which  is  impossible,  that  it  is  peace  which  does  not  pay. 
Mr.  Winston  Churchill  has  just  told  us  there  is  no  finality 
even  in  Super-Dreadnoughts,  that  each  invention  has 
barely  the  duration  of  a  Lord  Mayor,  that  every  year  the 
perfections  of  last  year  must  be  scrapped,  that  there  is  not 
an  item  of  equipment  but  has  to  be  constantly  revised, 
be  it  dockyard  machinery  or  telegraphic  apparatus,  be 
it  searchlights  or  torpedo-tubes,  range-finders  or  gyro- 
compasses, or  this  new  plague  of  air-ships.  For  the  Devil 
is  a  good  paymaster  and  the  cunningest  brains  of  the  globe 
are  at  work  in  his  smithies  and  laboratories  ever  destroying 
the  instruments  of  destruction  by  bettering  them.  Mr. 
Churchill  did  not  mention  the  cost  of  "casualties,  or  cite 
the  chapter  of  accidents.  Let  some  Member  of  Parliament 
extract  statistics  of  the  damages  of  the  last  decade — the 
lights  that  failed,  the  engines  that  exploded,  the  destroyers 
that  destroyed  themselves,  the  cruisers  that  collided,  the 
air-ships  that  foundered,  the  balloons  that  burst.  So  far 
from  feeling  that  safety  lies  in  numbers,  I  have  horrid  visions 
of  congested  ships,  under  real  war,  jamming  and  ramming, 
the  more  the  mazier.1  Add  the  cost  of  the  dress-rehearsals 

1  This  has  of  course  happened  as  the  recent  collision  between  the  Laverock 
and  the  Medusa  reminds  us.  Four  or  five  smaller  vessels  have  been  lost 


THE   WAR  DEVIL  83 

of  war,  not  merely  the  pageants  and  demonstrations,  but 
the  everyday  practice.  Every  gun  that  goes  off  blows  into 
smithereens  the  upkeep  of  a  family.  What  we  call  Peace  is 
thus  really  a  sort  of  Pankhurst-war,  writ  large,  in  which 
property  is  destroyed  on  a  colossal  scale,  if  not  life.  Were 
we  therefore  to  follow  the  economic  argument,  I  am  not  sure 
it  would  not  lead  us  to  wipe  out  the  German  navy  at  once, 
while  it  is  still  vincible,  rather  than  face  the  annual  de- 
struction of  scores  of  millions  of  money  which  Germany 
imposes  upon  us.  Which  conclusion  being  clearly  a  sug- 
gestion of  the  War  Devil,  it  ensues  that  the  Angel  of  Peace 
is  not  Norman.  And  verily  the  Angel  of  Peace  is  Hebrew, 
and  Hebrew  only.  It  is  Isaiah  with  his  great  vision  of  a 
brotherhood  of  toilers,  it  is  Jesus  with  His  quite  scientific 
doctrine  that  whoso  takes  the  sword  shall  perish  by  it. 
"  And  they  shall  beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares."  This 
is  the  only  scrapping  that  will  be  effective  in  the  end- 
not  of  sword  into  super-sword,  Dreadnought  into  Super- 
Dreadnought. 

IV 

The  War  Devil  has  yet  another  device.  For  the  price  of 
Peace  is  paid  not  only  in  hard  cash  but  in  honor.  The  fear 
of  the  Lord  is  the  beginning  of  Wisdom,  but  the  fear  of  the 
War  Devil  is  the  beginning  of  Madness.  Worse  than  war 

in  this  way;  three  or  more  have  inexcusably  blown  up  in  harbor,  and  a 
number  have  foundered  or  stranded.  But  on  the  whole  the  Navy  has  done 
marvellously,  and,  in  any  case,  the  point  of  this  article  was  not  to  demand  a 
reduction  of  the  Navy,  but  to  point  out  that  nq  rate  of  increase  could  be  a 
safeguard  against  war.  Coincidently  with  the  publication  of  this  article  came 
the  revelation  of  the  moneys  spent  by  the  great  German  gun  and  armor 
manufacturers  on  "patriotism"  and  now  that  more  than  a  hundred  millions 
a  week  are  being  spent  by  the  world  on  warfare,  a  colossal  automatic  mech- 
anism has  been  set  at  work  to  impede  the  coming  of  Peace.  All  news- 
papers that  talk  of  a  "patched-up  peace"  should  be  strictly  scrutinized; 
subsidization  is  always  as  possible  as  sincerity. 


84  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

is  the  death  of  the  soul  of  a  people.  For  if  there  is  a  peace 
of  God  which  passeth  all  understanding,  there  is  a  peace 
of  the  Devil  which  passeth  all  endurance.  It  is  a  peace 
purchased  by  sacrificing  to  security  every  high  national 
ideal,  every  generous  instinct.  Such  a  peace  we  enjoy  to- 
day. The  baleful  shadow  of  Bismarck  looms  like  a  Brocken- 
spectre  over  Europe,  and  in  her  terror  England  has  thrown 
herself  into  the  arms  of  Russia,  sinking  perforce  to  the  level 
of  her  barbarian  swain.  And  the  more  massive  her  arma- 
ments, the  more  mouse-like  her  action,  the  larger  her 
Dreadnoughts,  the  greater  her  dread.  We  have  all  the  cost 
of  greatness,  only  no  greatness.  And  the  same  spiritual 
blight  has  spread  over  the  bulk  of  Europe.  Hampered  by 
their  coats  of  mail,  the  nations  can  scarcely  move  a  finger. 
The  Balkan  States  rush  in  where  the  Great  Powers  fear  to 
tread,  and,  when  at  last  United  Europe  nerves  itself  to 
demonstrate,  it  is  against — Montenegro !  Here  is  the  War 
Devil's  opportunity  to  whisper,  is  Peace  worth  the  price? 
What  profits  it  to  guard  the  husk  of  a  people?  It  is  in  such 
moments  that  Christendom  pants  for  Crusades,  that  Islam 
proclaims  Jehads.  Only  by  remembering  there  is  no  "  Holy  " 
War  can  we  be  on  our  guard  against  the  War  Devil  in  this, 
his  subtlest  mood.  For  who  believes  to-day  that  history's 
Holy  Wars  were  indeed  holy?  The  most  righteous  war 
may  only  end  in  blood-lust  and  earth-hunger,  as  the  latest 
war  of  Cross  versus  Crescent  is  ending.  No,  let  us  turn  a 
deaf  ear  to  the  Devil,  though  he  speak  with  the  tongue  of 
angels.  Though  blood  and  iron  paralyze  and  demoralize 
Europe,  let  us  find  some  other  remedy  than  iron  and  blood. 


The  favorite  alternative  to  Armaments  is  Arbitration. 
But,  even  at  The  Hague,  let  us  beware  lest  the  War  Devil 


THE   WAR  DEVIL  85 

be  not  lulling  and  gulling  us.  Since  the  Hague  Conference 
was  established,  some  of  the  bloodiest  wars  in  history  have 
been  fought.  Outbuilt  at  sea,  Germany  takes  to  the  air. 
France  calls  on  her  citizens  for  Napoleonic  sacrifices.  Nay, 
British  Colonies,  long  as  languorous  abodes  of  Peace  as 
Thomson's  "Castle  of  Indolence,"  are  now  singing  his 
Rule,  Britannia  in  rag- time;  they  have  embraced  con- 
scription, and  are  building  battleships.  Pleasant  as  it  is 
to  recall  the  successes  of  The  Hague,  the  ubiquitous  Peace 
bodies,  the  Peace  agreements  and  Peace  conventions,  the 
Peace  congresses  and  the  Peace  celebrations,  and  the 
hundred  and  three  economists  now  preparing  erudite 
international  essays  out  of  the  interest  on  Mr.  Carnegie's 
two  millions,  let  us  not  forget  that  four  armament  firms  in 
Britain  alone  have  a  capital  of  twenty-three  millions,  on 
which  interest  must  be  earned.  And  over  the  thin  and 
intermittent  pipings  of  peace  crash  the  imperturbable 
hammers  of  the  War  Devil,  fashioning  his  ships;  the  great 
furnaces  roar,  forging  his  cannons,  the  war-drum  beats, 
the  trumpet  blares,  the  kings  go  to  their  thrones  to  the 
sound  of  tramping  soldiers,  the  great  captains  of  industry, 
the  chiefs  of  art  and  learning,  thrust  into  the  background, 
hidden  away  like  poor  relations.  So  long  as. the  War  Devil 
dictates  the  very  symbols  of  our  civilization,  he  will  re- 
main its  master.  So  long  as  our  conceptions  remain  radi- 
cally unchanged,  so  long  as  no  new  world-religion  flames  into 
being  with  a  new  passionate  sense  of  brotherhood  and  a 
new  scale  of  human  values,  so  long  we  shall  cry,  Peace, 
Peace,  where  there  is  no  Peace.  Arbitration  may  be  a 
palliative,  the  thought  that  the  profit  of  war  is  "a  great 
illusion"  may  give  men  pause,  but  neither  of  these  concep- 
tions goes  to  the  root  of  the  matter,  and  wherever  men 
feel  greatly  or  desire  greatly,  they  will  accept  no  arbitra- 
ment but  the  sword's.  And  it  is  Nationality,  not  gold, 


86  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

that  is  the  prize  of  war — the  enhanced  common  conscious- 
ness of  a  group,  with  all  its  rich-dyed  contributions  to  the 
web  of  human  existence — and  if  Nationality  is  not  worth 
the  cost,  or  can  be  secured  by  more  civilized  frictions,  or 
springs  sufficiently  from  heredity  and  environment,  let 
Nationality  or  its  dependence  on  war  be  denounced  as 
"the  great  illusion" — not  the  estimate  of  war's  profits, 
which  is  not  war's  mainspring. 

VI 

If  the  Peace-prophets  cannot  bring  the  Millennium,  it 
is  because  they  are  usually  purblind.  Hence  the  laughter 
of  the  ungodly.  Hell  is  paved  with  the  solutions  of  the 
myopic.  The  true  seer  must  first  of  all  see.  An  analysis 
of  Arbitration  shows  that  it  leaves  the  facts  of  life  out. 
It  deals  with  the  past.  Life  presses  to  the  future.  Life  is 
unstable  equilibrium.  There  is  no  reason  on  earth  why 
England  should,  and  Germany  should  not,  enjoy  the 
hegemony  of  the  world — except  that  so  it  is.  But  there  is 
equally  no  reason  why  it  should  remain  so.  By  labor  and 
sacrifice,  by  luck  or  cunning,  it  is  always  open  to  Germany 
to  push  England  from  her  pride  of  place.  And  everywhere 
in  the  New  World  new  nations  are  being  born,  old  breeds 
mingling,  fresh  life-forces  surging.  But  Arbitration  sup- 
poses a  closed  world,  a  fixed  world,  the  life-flood  frozen 
suddenly  when  the  first  Hague  Conference  was  founded. 
Its  experts  are  engaged  with  musty  documents,  with  faded 
maps,  with  forgotten  records.  Most  of  its  problems  are 
actually  connected  with  boundaries.  If  Arbitration  of 
this  sort  is  to  replace  war,  then  the  map  of  the  world  must 
remain  eternally  as  it  happened  to  be  at  the  moment 
Arbitration  was  invented.  But  endless  ancient  enmities 
seethe,  endless  aspirations  and  earth-hungers  demand 


THE   WAR  DEVIL  87 

satisfaction,  and  if  the  world  is  not  to  be  re-carved  by  the 
sword  it  must  be  readjusted  by  reason  and  love.  The 
learned  lawyers  cannot  help  us.  Their  arbitrations  take 
us  no  further.  Their  precedents  becloud  the  issue.  The 
love  of  Law  must  yield  to  the  law  of  love.  If  Germany 
desires  of  our  territory,  she  must  have  it.  There  is  no 
reason  other  than  the  sword  why  Britain  should  possess 
nearly  a  fourth  of  the  globe.  No  law  of  Sinai  or  Calvary 
laid  it  down  that  Australia  or  Egypt  should  be  British. 
An  all-red  route  means  a  route  of  blood.  In  her  turn,  Ger- 
many must  give  up  Alsace  and  Lorraine,  establish  "the 
open  door"  in  all  her  possessions.  And  so  all  round — over 
the  whole  field  of  politics.  Those  who  cannot  endure  the 
notion  of  freely  surrendering  territory  or  tariffs  at  the 
bidding  of  reason  and  love  must  cease  to  prate  of  Peace. 
Between  love  and  the  sword  there  is  no  true  third  way. 
Sir  Harry  Johnston  has  recently  published  a  precious  little 
volume,  indicating  from  his  rich  concrete  experience  of 
men  and  cities,  of  civilizations  and  savageries,  many  his- 
toric grievances  which  the  Powers  could  set  right  as  simply 
as  they  could  have  removed  the  Balkan  grievances  without 
the  Balkan  bloodshed.  Such  a  book  is  a  primer  of  true 
Arbitration,  a  first  aid  to  statesmen.  Without  such  an 
inner  spirit  the  Palace  of  Peace  is  a  white-washed  sepulchre. 
The  War-Devil  can  only  be  conquered  by  the  God  of  Love. 


LAMENT 

(Published  in  1912  in  the  First  Number  of  The  Daily  News  and  Leader) 

["The  arguments  of  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  the  supporters  of  his 
policy,  when  stripped  of  the  specious  garnishings  with  which  they 
were  originally  decked,  but  the  tattered  and  tawdry  remnants  of 
which  few  now  ever  pretend  to  cherish,  are  based  on  the  following 
assumptions,  all  of  which  are  open  to  grave  objections: 

"  (i)  That  moral  right  and  abstract  justice  have  no  place  in  Foreign 
Policy,  which  is  and  must  be  based  solely  on  considerations  of  ex- 
pediency. 

"  (2)  That  the  support  of  Russia  (it  is  absurd  to  talk  of  'friendship ' 
in  this  connection)  was  necessary  to  this  country  to  maintain  the 
'Balance  of  Power'  and  to  check  the  alleged  aspirations  of  Germany 
to  the  hegemony  of  Europe. 

"  (3)  That  Russia's  support  could  be  bought  and  retained  by  the 
sacrifice  of  Persia,  and  that  therefore  Persia  should  be  made  a  sacrifice 
to  that  end." — The  Persian  Oil  Concession,  by  PROFESSOR  E.  S. 
BROWNE.] 

They  blind  the  linnet  and  it  sings 

More  ripplingly  its  inner  glee, 
Giving  the  soul  a  sense  of  wings — 

I  cannot  sing  because  I  see. 

Time  was  my  voice  as  lightsome  rang — 
In  childish  darkness  lapped  secure, 

Self -shut  in  innocence  I  sang, 
The  world  was  pure  as  I  was  pure. 

A  world  whose  seas  yearned  to  its  skies, 

That  made  a  music  as  it  span, 
Quiring  in  holy  harmonies 

The  growing  godliness  of  man. 
88 


LAMENT  89 

A  world  whose  head  was  England,  crowned 

With  freedom,  chivalry  and  love, 
The  bondsman  of  the  wronged  and  bound, 

The  ark  to  every  fainting  dove. 

And  now  my  England  I  behold 

A  Sancho  Panza  Land,  supreme 
In  naught  save  land  and  ships  and  gold 

Security  her  highest  dream. 

Let  Finland  fall,  let  Persia  end, 

So  Russia  help  her  still  to  be, 
She  in  her  turn  will  aid  her  friend 

To  bloodier  autocracy. 

That  spheral  music  childhood  caught 

Is  mute,  and  for  that  angel-speech 
I  hear  the  jungle-gospel  taught 

In  tiger-roar  and  parrot-screech. 

For  man,  that  wilder  beast  of  brain, 
Whose  jaws  spit  fire,  whose  claws  are  swords 

Bellows  the  brute's  old  creed  again — 
Earth's  fiercest  are  her  lawful  lords. 

And  through  the  grassy  flowered  crust 

That  veils  her  burning  ball,  I  mark 
The  inner  hell  of  greed  and  lust, 

The  smouldering  forces  of  the  dark. 

I  see  the  sun-lands  where  the  flow 

Of  black  men's  blood  is  harvest-rain; 
Congo,  San  Thome,  Mexico, 

And  many  a  secret  place  of  pain. 

And  worse!  the  white  slaves  shipped  by  guile, 

The  women-freights  that  tawdry-bright 
Walk  alien  streets  with  tragic  smile 

And  mar  the  majesty  of  night. 


QO  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

I  see  what  drives  the  wheels  of  State, 
How  nations  hide  their  blood-stained  loot, 

Greatness  that  comes  by  murder's  gate, 
And  glory  by  the  all-red  route. 

Give  back  my  days  of  faith  and  flame, 
The  magic  mists  of  life  at  spring, 

Blind  me  to  Earth's  and  England's  shame, 
Put  out  my  eyes  and  let  me  sing. 


PARADISE  LOST 

(From  King  Albert's  Book) 

"Do  you  know  what  I  marvel  at  most  in  the  world?  It  is  the 
powerlessness  of  material  force.  Sooner  or  later  the  world  is  con- 
quered by  the  idea." 

Occasionally  for  me  the  fog  in  the  North  Sea  lifts,  and 
through  the  letters  of  a  young  officer  on  a  battleship  I  get 
a  glimpse  of  how  Britannia  is  ruling  the  waves.  The  pre- 
cise position  of  her  trident  remains  scrupulously  shrouded — 
at  first  even  the  name  was  removed  from  the  ship's  letter- 
paper — but  the  glimpse  is  enough  to  reveal  the  greatness 
and  madness  of  mankind.  It  is  life  at  its  acme  of  strain 
and  exaltation:  life  joyously  ready  to  pass  on  the  instant 
into  death,  as  some  unseen  mine  is  struck,  or  some  crafty 
torpedo  strikes.  Everybody  sleeps  in  his  clothes,  and  half 
the  night  not  at  all.  The  great  ship  is  bared  of  all  save 
necessities:  my  young  friend's  spare  wardrobe,  with  all 
his  miscellany  of  superfluous  possessions,  the  queer  garnered 
treasure  of  the  years,  comes  economically  home.  Why, 
indeed,  sink  more  capital  with  the  ship  than  is  absolutely 
inevitable? 

Now  and  again  the  tension  of  this  terrible  vigilance  is 
relieved,  if  only  by  a  change  in  tension.  One  seeks  death 
instead  of  waiting  for  it.  There  is  a  grapple  with  a  German 
cruiser,  and  those  not  at  the  guns  crowd  cheerfully  on 
deck  to  watch  the  match  with  that  wonderful  British  love 
of  sport.  They  compare  the  cannonading,  note  with  lively 
interest  the  scores  made  by  the  rival  shells.  Once  the  rift 

91 


92  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

in  the  fog  shows  the  return  of  a  raiding  flotilla,  scarred 
with  glorious  battle,  and  the  other  vessels  of  the  fleet  are 
dressed  to  salute  its  triumph,  the  bands  are  playing  Rule, 
Britannia,  the  crews  are  cheering  and  singing. 

But  none  of  these  peeps  has  left  on  me  so  ineffaceable  an 
impression  as  the  picture  of  my  young  friend  reading — 
reading  at  every  break  in  his  grim  watches — and  reading 
not  the  detective  stories  that  unbent  Bismarck  but — 
Paradise  Lost!  For  the  first  time  he  has  had  leisure 
to  read  that  sonorous  epic  straight  through  and,  unlike 
Dr.  Johnson  who  questioned  if  anyone  ever  wished  it 
longer,  he  revels  insatiably  in  the  Miltonic  splendors,  and 
he  quotes  Addison  and  the  Spectator  in  endorsement  of  his 
enthusiasm.  Despite  the  Admiralty  decree,  you  see,  he 
has  been  unable  to  regard  his  books  as  dispensable:  they 
must  sink  or  float  with  him.  And  so  in  the  midst  of  this 
waste  of  white  waters  and  hissing  shrapnel,  he  has  found 
for  himself  a  quiet  Paradise  of  beautiful  words  and  visionary 
magnificence,  and  it  exists  for  him  out  of  relation  to  the 
tense  and  tragic  actual.  And  yet  what  could  be  apter 
reading  than  this  epic. 

"  Of  man's  first  disobedience  and  the  fruit 
Of  that  forbidden  tree  whose  mortal  taste 
Brought  death  into  the  world  and  all  our  woe?  " 

The  very  first  incident,  indeed,  recorded  after  Paradise 
was  lost  is  a  murder,  and  this  fratricidal  strife  of  Cain  and 
Abel  has  repeated  itself  in  every  generation  and  given  to 
the  phrase  "the  brotherhood  of  man"  a  sinister  significance. 
But  never  in  all  the  long  history  of  blood-lust  have  so  many 
millions  of  brothers  stood  embattled,  ready  to  spike  one 
another's  bowels  with  steel,  or  shatter  their  faces  with 
devilish  explosives,  as  in  this  twentieth  century  of  the 
Christian  era. 


PARADISE   LOST  93 

Now,  whatever  be  the  rights  or  wrongs  of  war,  one  thing 
seems  clear.  The  weapons  are  wrong.  My  young  friend, 
with  his  fine-spun  brain  and  his  spiritual  delight  in  Milton's 
harmonics,  ought  not  to  be  annihilated  by  a  piece  of  raw 
matter.  One  does  not  fight  a  Sevres  vase  with  a  stone. 
Bring  up  your  Chinese  vase  an  you  will,  and  let  the  battle 
be  of  beauty.  There  is  a  horrible  expression,  "food  for 
powder" — you  will  find  it  in  all  languages  that  are  really 
civilized.  It  implies  that  the  masses  are  so  coarse  in  tex- 
ture, are  carcasses  so  gross  and  sub-human,  that  their 
best  use  is  to  be  thrown  to  the  guns — a  providential  fire- 
screen for  the  finer  classes.  Democracy  will  in  due  time 
take  note  of  this  conception.  But  in  its  rude  way  the 
phrase  shadows  forth  a  truth — the  truth  that,  for  all  who 
have  passed  beyond  the  animal  stage,  the  war  of  tooth  and 
claw  is  antiquated.  Our  war,  if  war  there  be,  must  be 
conducted  with  weapons  suitable  to  the  dignity  of  the 
super-beast  who  has  been  so  laboriously  evolved,  suitable 
to  the  spirit  which  through  innumerable  aeons  has  been 
winning  its  way  through  the  welter  of  brute  impulses.  Not 
for  man  the  slaver  of  the  serpent,  the  fangs  of  the  tiger. 
And  shelling  is  only  the  ejection  of  a  deadlier  slaver,  the 
bayonet  only  a  fiercer  fang.  It  seems  futile  to  have  evolved 
from  the  brute  if  our  brain-power  only  makes  us  bigger 
brutes.  "The  man  behind  the  gun" — a  1 5-inch  gun  that 
hurls  a  ton  of  metal  for  twelve  miles — is  a  wilder  and  more 
monstrous  beast  than  ever  appeared  even  in  the  ante- 
diluvian epoch,  and  that  he  should  not  be  kept  safely  stuffed 
in  a  museum  like  the  pterodactyl  is  ,an  intolerable  anach- 
ronism. A  world  in  which  with  one  movement  of  his 
paw  he  can  kill  off  a  whole  congregation  of  Milton-wor- 
shippers is  a  world  which  should  have  been  nipped  in  the 
nebula.  No,  if  fighting  there  must  be,  let  my  young  friend 
fight  against  Nietzsche-worshippers — let  the  lucid  lines 


94  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

of  the  Puritan  poet  confound  the  formless  squadrons  of 
the  Pagan  dithyrambist.  Brain  against  brain,  soul  against 
soul,  thought  against  thought,  art  against  art,  man,  in 
short,  against  man — there  lies  the  fight  of  the  future.  If 
my  young  friend  were  a  man  of  science,  he  would  be  kept 
awake  not  by  the  German  torpedoes  but  by  the  German 
treatises:  were  he  only  a  tailor,  he  should  never  throw 
away  his  yard-stick  for  a  lance  but  with  his  good  old  scissors 
cut  out  the  Teutonic  tailor. 

After  such  civilized  fashion,  indeed,  the  Anglo-German 
contest  has  long  been  raging,  and  the  German  has  been 
winning  all  along  the  line.  His  patience,  his  industry,  his 
nice  study  of  his  customers,  has  everywhere  swept  the 
Englishman  aside.  Before  his  music  the  Briton  fell — in 
worship;  his  drama  invaded  us  triumphantly.  Why  was 
Germany  not  content  with  this  victorious  campaign,  with 
this  campaign  worthy  of  human  beings?  German  in- 
fluence, German  Kultur — it  is  spread  by  peace,  not  by  the 
sword.  To  German  Universities  shoals  of  Russian  students 
flocked  as  to  shrines,  humble  feudatories  of  German  scholar- 
ship, German  thoroughness.  To  the  barbarous  regions, 
where  an  Ovid  might  still  lament  his  exile,  they  carried 
back  German  methods,  the  cult  of  German  science.  And 
to  me,  on  my  illiterate  island,  little  German  cities,  a  Munich, 
a  Dresden,  where  the  theatre  was  classic  and  inexpensive, 
and  the  opera  a  form  of  art  and  not  a  social  display,  loomed 
like  models  of  civilization.  Why  must  Germany  challenge 
the  world  on  the  lower  plane  of  brute  matter?  It  is  only 
the  inferior  peoples  that  need  the  sword.  The  Turks  have 
had  to  rule  with  a  rod  of  iron — they  had  no  right  but  might, 
no  gift  for  the  world.  Such  races  must  assert  themselves 
in  fire  and  write  their  edicts  in  blood.  But  fire  burns  down 
and  blood  dries  up  and  fades,  and  the  only  durable  in- 
fluence is  the  power  of  the  spirit. 


PARADISE   LOST  95 

Fatal  perversity  of  Germany — to  have  misunderstood 
her  own  greatness!  Proud  in  her  pseudo-philosophy,  she 
has  repeated  "man's  first  disobedience" — she  has  ignored 
the  divine  voice,  she  has  listened  to  the  lower  promptings 
of  the  serpent.  There  will  never  be  a  Paradise  again  for 
man  till  he  bends  his  ear  to  a  truer  philosopher  than 
Treitschke,  to  a  prince  of  peace: 

"  Till  one  greater  man 
Restore  us  and  regain  the  blissful  seat." 


TEE  SHADOWS  OF  SOCIETY 

"  As  rags  are  but  the  shadows  of  our  riches 
And  prostitutes  the  shadows  of  our  lust, 

And  glooming  slums  are  cast  by  shining  mansions, 
And  round  our  churches  lies  a  dark  distrust. 

So  in  this  War  where  love  and  pity  cease 

Behold  the  obverse  image  of  our  Peace." 


96 


THE  NEXT  WAR 

"As  I  reflected  upon  the  intensive  application  of  man  to  war  in 
cold,  rain,  and  mud;  in  rivers,  canals,  and  lakes;  underground,  in  the 
air,  and  under  the  sea;  infected  with  vermin,  covered  with  scabs, 
adding  the  stench  of  his  own  filthy  body  to  that  of  his  decomposing 
comrades;  hairy,  begrimed,  bedraggled,  yet  with  unflagging  zeal 
striving  eagerly  to  kill  his  fellows;  and  as  I  felt  within  myself  the 
mystical  urge  of  the  sound  of  great  cannon,  I  realized  that  war  is  a 
normal  state  of  man." — DR.  GEORGE  W.  CRILE:  A  Mechanistic  View 
of  War  and  Peace. 

A  hundred  years  ago  the  Congress  of  Vienna  met  with 
dancing  and  revelry  to  put  the  peace  of  Europe  on  a  per- 
manent foundation.  Even  the  Jews,  represented  by  dep- 
uties, looked  forward — as  the  reward  of  their  fratricidal 
strife  in  every  camp — to  equal  rights  everywhere. 

While  the  pundits  and  diplomatists  were  still  talking, 
Napoleon  escaped  from  Elba,  but  after  the  little  hitch  of 
Waterloo,  the  Eight  Powers  proceeded  with  the  partition 
of  their  world,  and  the  Czar  of  Russia,  the  Emperor  of  Aus- 
tria and  the  King  of  Prussia,  entered  into  a  Holy  Alliance 
so  that  the  Peace  of  Europe  and  the  principles  of  Chris- 
tianity should  be  henceforth  unbroken. 

At  more  than  one  peace-gathering  in  London,  informed 
by  even  more  than  the  Viennese  enthusiasm  for  humanity, 
it  has  been  my  ungrateful  role  to  try  to  bring  home  to  my 
fellow-members  the  magnitude  of  our  task,  the  pettiness  of 
our  equipment  and  the  insufficiency  of  our  sacrifices. 

But  there  is  nothing  more  blinding  than  the  white  light 
of  an  ideal.  On  one  of  these  occasions  the  late  Mr.  Stead 
rebuked  me  hotly  for  my  "  unbelief ";  he  had  just  made  a 

97 


98  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

tour  of  the  crowned  heads  of  Europe  and  they  were  princes 
of  peace,  one  and  all — war  was  practically  ruled  out. 
Another  time  it  was  the  chairman,  Lord  Shaw,  who  was 
stung  into  reproof,  the  shrewd  Scotch  Lord  of  Appeal 
rhapsodizing  like  a  Shelley. 

But  the  most  recent  and  vivid  of  my  recollections — it  is 
scarcely  older  than  the  war — is  of  seeing  Sir  Edward  Grey 
and  Mr.  Carnegie  side  by  side  at  a  public  peace-dinner, 
the  fine  upstanding  English  squire  and  the  shrivelled 
Scotch-American  ironmaster,  each  buoying  up  the  other's 
dreams  and  the  little  octogenarian  declaring  with  shining 
eyes  that  he,  Carnegie,  would  yet  live  to  see  the  end  of  war.1 

The  Congress  of  Vienna  had  at  least  the  fall  of  Napoleon 
for  an  asset  of  hope.  But  in  1914  the  very  outbreak  of 
war  was  the  signal  for  the  outbreak  of  optimism.  The 
War  That  Will  End  War  was  the  title  of  a  precipitate 
pamphlet  by  Mr.  Wells  and  his  hail  to  the  coming  Peace 
on  Earth  found  a  hundred  echoes.  But  it  is  characteristic 
of  Utopians  that  in  the  very  bankruptcy  of  their  visions 
they  find  a  fresh  ground  of  hope,  since  a  crash  is  at  least 
a  change,  and  as  yet  stagnation  has  been  the  limit  of 
their  achievement.  The  roughest  examination  of  the  facts 
reveals,  however,  that  the  seeds  of  war  are  scattered  over 
the  planet  as  profusely  as  the  seeds  of  life,  and  as  it  needs 
only  the  fructification  of  a  single  seed  to  engender  war, 
the  notion  that  we  can  escape  war  by  some  process  other 
than  the  eradication  of  these  seeds  from  human  nature, 
by  some  diplomatic  dexterity,  International  Tribunal,  or 
financial  demonstration,  is  a  pathetic  illusion. 

1  The  exact  date  was  June  14,  1914,  eleven  days  before  Austria  declared 
war.  On  my  menu  I  find  pencilled  by  Mr.  Carnegie  the  name  of  "Count 
Karuebuck"  of  the  Palace  of  Peace  at  The  Hague  to  whom  he  referred  me 
in  a  certain  pacifist  matter.  A  German  paper  reminds  me  that  Mr.  Carnegie 
presented  a  tribute  to  the  Kaiser  as  an  expression  of  the  admiration  of  peace- 
lovers  all  the  world  over. 


THE   NEXT  WAR  99 

Most  of  the  germs  of  war  lie  indeed  in  the  spheres  of 
consciousness  below  Reason,  and  to  eliminate  them  needs 
a  transformation  of  our  deepest  being.  Men  need  not 
become  supermen,  but  they  must  complete  their  evolution 
from  the  brute.  The  widely  diffused  ardor  for  world-peace 
is  a  welcome  sign  that  this  evolution  is  still  in  process,  but 
this  moral  ardor  is  not  accompanied  by  any  adequate 
intellectual  grasp  of  realities,  nor  is  it  even  moral  enough 
to  be  willing  to  pay  the  price  of  peace;  no,  not  even  though 
we  have  now  learnt  the  price  of  war — the  colossal,  stagger- 
ing, sickening  price  of  modern  war. 

Until  the  conquering  nations  are  ready  to  pool  their 
winnings  and  divide  them  among  the  losers,  it  is  idle  to 
expect  the  Millennium.  Let  us  rather  analyze  the  causes 
of  war  so  that  in  the  "war  against  war"  we  may  know 
what  we  are  up  against,  and  where  to  apply  our  counter 
pressure. 

The  first  cause  of  war  is  the  combative  and  sporting 
element  in  man,  relic  of  his  primeval  barbarism.  The 
higher  ape  we  call  Homo  is  the  bravest  and  fiercest  of  the 
beasts.  But  he  is  angel  as  well  as  beast,  and  the  fighting 
instinct  is  imblent  with  his  noblest  of  impulses  of  love  and 
self-sacrifice.  He  alone  is  capable  of  fighting  for  a  vision. 

It  is  this  heroic  side  of  war  which  the  Utopians  ignore. 
The  military  manual  instructs  you  to  twist  your  bayonet 
hi  the  enemy's  bowels,  since  mere  transfixing  may  not  be 
fatal.  What  can  be  more  revolting?  Yet,  to  overlook  that 
the  twister  is  offering  his  own  entrails  to  the  steel — to 
dismiss  him  as  a  mere  murderous  brute — what  can  be  more 
unjust?  Tennyson  tells  us  that  it  is  not  so  difficult  to 
overthrow  a  lie,  but  that 

"  A  lie  which  is  part  a  truth  is  a  harder  matter  to  fight." 
War  is  a  lie  which  is  half  a  truth,  and  hence  its  invinci- 


100  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

bility.  And  it  is  this  truthful  half  which  supplies  a  sound 
basis  for  all  the  poetry  and  romance  of  war,  though  these 
in  their  turn  hide  away  the  other  half — the  dirt  and  disease, 
the  dullness  and  ghastliness,  and  the  fact  that  the  warrior 
is  butcher  as  well  as  martyr. 

At  the  front  or  in  the  hospitals,  the  verminous,  gangre- 
nous aspects  of  "the  sport  of  kings"  cannot  indeed  be 
obscured,  but  these  ugly  realities  are  the  secret  of  a  small 
minority;  their  descriptions  are  often  euphemistic,  and 
even  when  realistic  are  not  realized  by  the  vast  majority 
of  the  nation,  dominated  as  these  are  by  the  romantic 
vision  of  war,  and,  after  a  time,  under  the  hypnotic  obses- 
sion of  the  dominant  romanticism  and  the  transitoriness  of 
physical  impressions,  the  horrors  fade  even  from  the  minds 
of  the  witnesses.  The  wounded  who  recover  are  pleased, 
and  dead  men  tell  no  tales. 

As  over  the  torn  and  blackened  fields  of  blood  the  green 
grass  comes  back  to  cover  and  purify,  so  poetry  gathers 
over  the  ghastliest  realities,  illumining  them  with  the  old 
glamor.  Mothers  who  have  lost  their  sons  cannot  afford 
not  to  feel  their  death  was  necessary  and  sublime.  The 
vested  interests  of  love  and  grief  are  solid  for  war.  The 
great  national  storehouse  of  war-lyrics  and  battle-pictures 
finds  itself  enriched  by  new  treasures,  beauty  blossoming 
like  roses  under  the  manure  of  carnage,  and  the  next  genera- 
tion is  born  into  an  even  more  compelling  atmosphere  of 
combat. 

War  breeds  war  as  money  begets  money.  Its  infection 
is  with  us  from  the  nursery.  It  is  significant  that  Mr.  Wells, 
himself,  has  not  only  found  his  chief  literary  inspiration 
in  war,  but  has  actually  placed  on  the  market  a  new  war- 
game.  After  Armageddon,  fought  as  it  has  been  on  land 
and  sea,  in  air  and  under  water,  the  novel  combinations 
of  adventure  will  engender  a  series  of  books  for  boys  which 


THE   NEXT  WAtt.,  ,'  '  .  IOI 

will  enthrall  the  young  generation  and  bind  it  fast  to  the 
war  chariot.1 

Moreover,  just  as  War  is  a  lie  which  is  half  a  truth,  so 
Peace  may  be  a  truth  which  is  half  a  lie.  To  quote  Tenny- 
son again: 

"Peace  in  her  vineyard — yes! — but  a  company  forges  the  wine." 

When  Peace  in  her  turn  becomes  the  breeding  ground 
of  sordidness,  when  life  sinks  to  the  cult  of  comfort  and 
the  dollar,  then  the  spirit  of  man  turns  with  tragic  impa- 
tience to  the  other  half-truth  and  the  same  poet  to  whom 
we  owe  the  exquisite  picture  of  an  earth  robed  in  universal 
harvest, 

"Universal  ocean  softly  washing  all  her  warless  isles," 
is  found  calling  for 

"The  blood-red  blossom  of  War  with  a  heart  of  fire." 

The  second  cause  of  war  is  the  existence  of  the  Army 
and  Navy,  with  all  their  historic  tradition,  their  ritual 
and  pageantry,  their  atmosphere  of  music  and  bravery, 
and  the  subconscious  desire  which  they  beget  in  their  mem- 
bers for  professional  experience,  and  in  the  nation  at  large 
for  utilization  of  these  vast  assets.  Who  can  believe  that 
any  nation  is  ripe  for  the  disbandment  of  historic  regiments, 
the  scrapping  of  warships?  War  in  fact  has  had  a  fillip 
by  the  invention  of  airships  and  submarines,  for  curiosity 

1  Of  course  some  of  these  books  will  ostensibly  be  written  for  adults,  and 
for  these  childish  minds  this  war  will  be  a  storehouse  for  ages.  Villains  can 
be  killed  by  Zeppelins,  or  torpedoed  on  the  high  seas,  intrigues  can  be  covered 
by  alleged  internments,  ladies'  limbs  can  be  blown  into  festive  lunch-tables, 
as  occurred  in  Paris.  Thrills  in  short,  ad  infinitum.  The  cinematograph 
will  of  course  seize  on  all  that  is  appealing  and  eliminate  all  that  is  revolting: 
Did  our  Press  Bureau  supply  unselected  film-pictures  of  war,  the  next 
generation  would  no  more  want  a  war  than  an  earthquake. 


102  THE  -WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

as  to  the  practical  working  of  all  our  novel  engines  of  war 
is  added  to  the  itch  for  action. 

The  third  cause  of  war  is  Nationality,  with  its  struggle 
first  for  breathing  space  and  then  for  places  in  the  sun, 
and  its  semi-false  conceptions  of  national  glory.  The  price 
of  Nationality  is  War,  and  so  long  as  Nationality  is  believed 
to  be  worth  the  price,  War  there  will  be.  The  boundaries 
of  nations  are  drawn  in  blood.  They  stand  by  their  mili- 
tary strength  or  their  strategic  alliance  with  military 
strength.  To  relieve  them  from  the  pressure  of  enemies 
would  be  to  sap  the  nerve  of  Nationality. 

There  are  those  who  urge  that  everything  is  at  bottom 
economic.  But  if  I  have  not  given  the  economic  factors 
the  first  place,  a  high  place  they  must  surely  have. 

The  vested  interests  of  war  are  gigantic.  An  expert, 
addressing  the  Royal  Statistical  Society  of  London,  calcu- 
lated that  the  total  cost  of  the  first  year  of  this  war  would 
be  nearly  ten  thousand  million  pounds.  Even  in  peace  the 
trade  of  death  is  the  livelihood  of  millions,  and  any  attempt 
to  cut  down  armaments  will  be  resisted  insidiously  or  openly 
by  forces  imponderable  but  almost  invincible.  And  besides 
the  interests  already  vested  there  are  the  interests  sought — 
the  trade  monopolies  and  markets,  the  exploitation  of  mines 
and  oil  wells  and  food-supply  areas. 

Dynastic  and  holy  wars  are  diminishing  but  far  from 
extinct,  and  the  clergy  by  never  failing  to  bless  the  war 
banners  keep  up  the  notion  that  every  war  is  holy.  Color 
and  race  still  maintain  that  dislike  for  the  unlike,  which 
is  a  fruitful  source  of  strife. 

The  modern  grouping  of  Alliances  and  Powers  make 
for  war  by  increasing  the  war  risks  of  every  member.  The 
new  importance  of  time  and  the  attack  in  modern  strategics 
gives  no  breathing  space  for  delay.  Negotiations  are  con- 
ducted at  a  fever-heat  not  conducive  to  pacific  settlement. 


THE   NEXT  WAR  103 

Autocracy  makes  for  war  through  the  temptation  to 
cover  up  failures  at  home  by  a  " spirited  foreign  policy," 
and  Democracy  makes  for  war  because  the  masses  are 
easily  inflamed.  So  far  from  this  being  the  last  war,  the 
cult  of  war-glory  has  spread — not  without  cause — to  the 
hitherto  almost  bloodless  regions  of  Australia  and  New 
Zealand,  as  Kant  feared  it  would  when  the  masses  were 
no  longer  the  mere  pawns  of  monarchies.  "We  have 
painted  the  Southern  Pacific  pink"  writes  an  Australian 
proudly. 

Contiguity  makes  for  war — two  schools  will  always 
fight;  so  will  town  and  gown.  It  looks  as  if  every  atom  has 
both  an  attractive  and  a  repulsive  force  towards  every 
other.1  Add  to  these  war-factors  the  personal  quarrels 
of  monarchs  and  statesmen  (or  their  women  kind)  and  the 
chapter  of  accidents,  and  you  will  see  against  what  titanic 
forces  Mr.  Carnegie  arrays  his  posse  of  professors  and 
pamphleteers.  Even  if  there  were  no  other  causes  of  war, 
the  great  historic  and  romantic  tradition  would  suffice  to 
kindle  it.  No  generation  likes  to  die  without  seeing  this 
famous  thing — War — with  its  own  eyes.  Every  generation 
must  have  its  war,  and  so  the  latest  date  for  The  Next 
War  is  fixed  by  the  life  of  the  generation  now  being  born. 

1  "The  houses  of  the  ancient  city  of  Lincoln  are  divided,"  says  Charles 
Lamb,  "between  the  dwellers  on  the  hill  and  in  the  valley.  This  marked 
distinction  formed  an  obvious  division  between  the  boys  who  lived  above 
(however  brought  together  in  a  common  school)  and  the  boys  whose  pa- 
ternal residence  was  on  the  plain;  a  sufficient  cause  of  hostility  in  the  code 
of  these  young  Grotiuses.  My  father  had  been  a  leading  Mountainer;  and 
would  still  maintain  the  general  superiority,  in'  skill  and  hardihood,  of  the 
Above  Boys  (his  own  faction)  over  the  Below  Boys  (so  they  were  called), 
of  which  party  his  contemporary  had  been  a  chieftain." 


ARMS  AND  THE  MAN 

"If  we  consider  gunpowder  as  an  instrument  of  human  destruction, 
incalculably  more  powerful  than  any  that  skill  has  devised  or  accident 
presented  before,  acquiring,  as  experience  shows  us,  a  more  sanguinary 
dominion  in  every  succeeding  age,  and  borrowing  all  the  progressive 
resources  of  science  and  civilization  for  the  extermination  of  mankind, 
we  shall  be  appalled  at  the  future  prospects  of  the  species,  and  feel 
perhaps  in  no  other  instance  so  much  difficulty  in  reconciling  the 
mysterious  dispensation  with  the  benevolent  order  of  Providence." — 
HALLAM:  Europe  During  the  Middle  Ages. 

My  little  children  lie  sleeping  in  their  beautiful  home  by 
the  sea,  lovely  little  heads  haloed  in  curls,  gentle  little  souls 
in  dreamless  innocence.  And  at  any  moment  through  the 
starry  silence  of  the  night  may  come  shrieking  and  crash- 
ing a  shell  that  will  rend  and  shatter  home  and  babes  in 
one  fell  fury.  Blindly  it  may  hurtle,  from  an  invisible 
telescope-eyed  metal  monster  twenty  miles  at  sea,  along  a 
curve  rising  higher  than  Mont  Blanc,  and  I  am  helpless 
against  it;  more  helpless  than  was  the  lonely  farmer  of  the 
prairie  against  the  Red  Indian.  But  as  a  citizen,  I  am 
responsible  for  the  belchings  of  similar  monsters  against 
alien  babes  in  opposite  sea-places,  and  my  little  ones  will 
grow  up  to  wield  the  same,  or  still  more  devilish,  gun- 
power,  nay  even  now — in  all  their  fragile  beauty — could 
send  the  electric  spark  to  explode  the  mass  of  cordite  that 
hurls  the  ton  of  matter  through  the  air  at  three  thousand 
feet  a  second.  It  is  surely  time  for  humanity  to  take  stock 
of  its  situation.1 

1  The  famous  Skoda  gun,  says  a  newspaper,  sends  a  "Pilsener"  shell  which 
kills  everyone  within  150  yards  and  kills  many  who  are  further  off.  The 

104 


ARMS  AND   THE  MAN  105 

When  the  three  Brobdingnagian  savants  examined 
Gulliver,  they  could  not  believe  him  produced  according 
to  Nature,  since  he  had  no  visible  means  of  self-defence, 
not  even  swiftness  in  fleeing,  and  even  though  his  teeth 
proved  him  carnivorous,  science  could  scarcely  find  any 
creature  that  did  not  over-match  him.  And  indeed  before 
man  discovered  arms,  he  was  as  poorly  off  among  his  fellow- 
beasts  as  Gulliver  in  Giantland.  Samson  may  have  rent 
a  lion  as  he  would  have  rent  a  kid,  and  Hercules  may  have 
strangled  snakes  with  his  infant  fingers,  but  man's  normal 
sinews  of  war,  even  though  magnified  by  a  primitive  Jiu- 
jitsu,  would  have  left  him  still  up  a  tree.  When  Herbert 
Spencer  and  Huxley  saw  a  man  bathing,  they  marvelled — 
so  Spencer  tells  us  in  his  Autobiography — that  this  creature 
should  have  secured  the  hegemony  of  the  planet.  But  of 
course  it  was  not  man  naked  and  natural  that  became  the 
lord  of  creation,  but  man  armed  and  unashamed.  Brain 
triumphed  over  brawn,  and  the  hand  that  tore  off  the 
branch  had  grasped  the  rod  of  empire.  The  anthropoid 
apes  merely  bite  and  scratch.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  in- 
deed, was  kept  at  bay  by  a  female  orang-outang  that  threw 

mere  pressure  of  gas  breaks  in  the  partitions  and  roofs  of  bomb-proof  shel- 
ters. Scores  of  men  who  escape  metal  fragments,  stones,  and  showers  of 
earth,  are  killed,  lacerated,  or  blinded  by  the  pressure  of  the  gas.  The  gas 
gets  into  the  body  cavities  and  expands,  tearing  the  flesh  asunder.  Some- 
times only  the  clothes  are  stripped  off,  leaving  intact  the  boots.  Of  men  close 
by  not  a  fragment  remains;  the  clothes  disappear  and  only  small  metal 
articles  are  found.  If  the  shell  is  very  near  the  explosion  melts  rifle  barrels 
as  if  they  were  struck  by  lightning.  Men  who  disappear  in  such  explosions 
are  often  reported  missing,  as  there  is  no  proof  of  their  death. 

This  instrument  of  Twentieth  Century  Civilization  weighs  2,800  Ibs. 
It  has  a  normal  trajectory  of  4^  miles  high  and  in  soft  ground  it  penetrates 
twenty  feet  before  exploding,  which  takes  place  two  seconds  after  impact. 

A  "Jack  Johnson"  can  make  a  hole  40  feet  across  and  18  feet  deep.  The 
i5-inch  "  sea-gun"  is  a  tube  58  feet  long,  weighing  97  tons  and  wound  with 
190  miles  of  steel  ribbon.  It  hurls  a  2,000  Ib.  shell  twelve  miles  with  mar- 
vellous accuracy — each  discharge  breeds  an  energy  capable  of  lifting  82,000 
tons!— W.  G.  FITZGERALD,  on  The  Workshops  of  War. 


106  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

from  her  tree  a  shower  of  branches  and  heavy-spined  fruits, 
and  the  chimpanzee  can  snatch  the  hunter's  spear  and 
break  it,  even  turn  it  against  him.  But  that  is  the  limit 
in  the  animal  world,  just  as  the  size  of  a  baby's  brain  is 
the  limit  of  the  gorilla's. 

The  proof  of  the  advent  of  man  is  found  not  in  his  bones, 
but  in  his  stones — the  rude  flint  choppers  and  borers  of 
the  River-drift  Men.  He  that  was  greatest  among  anthro- 
poids threw  the  first  stone.  Slings  and  arrows  were  the 
sources  of  his  outrageous  fortune.  From  the  sling  to  the 
17-inch  gun  is  a  mere  orderly  progress  through  the  ballista 
and  the  matchlock,  and  the  first  savage  who  tipped  his  reed 
with  poison  was  a  Prussian  war-lord  in  embryo.  Stone 
gave  way  to  bronze,  bronze  to  steel.  The  club  begot  the 
spear  and  the  sword. 

By  weapons  thus  clapped  on  and  not  part  of  his  organism 
like  his  teeth  and  nails,  the  cunning  brute  obtained  an 
immense  extension  of  militant  power.  But  this  separation 
of  arms  from  the  man  has  had  other  consequences  that 
our  race  has  not  yet  realized.  For  all  these  adjustable 
artifices  of  offence  and  defence  have  dispensed  with  Time. 
To  evolve,  say  a  spear,  as  an  integral  part  of  the  organism 
like  the  tusk  of  the  boar,  would  have  cost  a  million  years. 
But  a  detachable  spear  needs  only  to  be  invented  to  be  at 
once  transmissible  to  the  next  generation.  And  in  dodging 
Time,  a  monster  has  been  created  more  uncanny  than 
Frankenstein's. 

For  when  a  fighting  apparatus  is  naturally  developed 
from  within,  it  bears  a  reasonable  proportion  to  the  rest  of 
the  creature.  It  is  in  living  relation  with  the  whole  organ- 
ism, and  to  evolve  it  some  portion  of  the  total  vital  energy 
must  be  subtracted  and  specialized.  An  artificial  weapon  is 
not  only  in  no  necessary  relation  or  proportion  to  the 
wielder,  but  being  indefinitely  variable,  gives  him  an  infinite 


ARMS  AND   THE  MAN  107 

range  of  deadliness.  Of  the  multiform  organs  of  militancy 
developed  by  Nature  in  the  struggle  for  existence,  and  dis- 
tributed among  the  different  species,  man  adopted  all — the 
dagger-claws  of  the  tiger,  the  bayonet-horns  of  the  bull,  the 
poison-fangs  of  the  cobra,  the  mail-plate  of  the  crocodile. 
He  became  less  an  animal  than  an  armory.  By  traps  he 
borrowed  the  sinister  passivity  of  the  spider,  by  saps  and 
mines  he  copied  the  mole,  by  barbed  wire  he  simulated 
the  spines  of  the  porcupine.  The  fox  was  out-rivalled  by 
his  tricks,  the  skunk  out-stunk  by  his  gases,  the  cuttle- 
fish troubled  the  waters  less  foully.  And  now  this  crown 
of  creation  has  taken  on  a  new  amphibious  existence  as  a 
bird  of  prey  in  the  air  and  a  fire-spitting  dragon  of  the  deep.1 
If  self-preservation  is  the  first  law  of  .nature,  and  if,  as 
Spinoza  taught,  the  effort  to  preserve  our  being  according 
to  its  essence  is  virtue,  we  cannot  find  combat  immoral. 
Every  creature  must  secure  its  food  and  its  mate,  and  pro- 
tect its  young,  and  in  so  far  as  its  fighting  is  conditioned 
by  its  necessities  and  corresponds  to  its  feelings,  the  crea- 
ture is  within  the  moral  order.  So  long,  therefore,  as  man 
relied  on  his  thews  and  his  teeth,  the  ethical  situation  was 
simple.  But  the  supplanting  of  thews  and  teeth  by  artifi- 
cial weapons  complicated  the  position.2  For  one  thing, 
it  split  up  the  species,  creating  almost  a  new  sex  of  non- 

1  That  is  why  there  can  be  no  Superman.    The  real  literal  Superman  is 
already  here  in  the  shape  of  the  man  in  the  Zeppelin,  who  hovers  over  us, — 
according  to  his  own  confession — like  a  god.     We  can  no  longer  evolve 
externally;  internally  we  have  been  evolving  all  the  time,  but  our  accidental 
Supermen,  Buddha,  Moses  and  Plato  have  not  managed  to  perpetuate  them- 
selves. « 

2  As  controversy  equalizes  fools  and  wise,  so  gunpowder  equalizes  Hercules 
and  Tom  Thumb.    A  letter  sent  from  France,  and  quoted  in  the  Times  of 
January  24,  1916,  says:  "We  had  an  officer  killed,  Lovell.  He  was  a  splendid 
man  6  ft.  5  in.  in  height  and  an  absolute  Hercules — it  makes  one  furious  to 
think  that  the  man  who  fired  the  infernal  grenade  that  killed  him  was  very 
likely  a  puny,  little  weak-chested  man,  whom  he  could  have  crushed  with 
one  hand.    In  the  old  days  Lovell  would  have  been  worth  ten  ordinary  men." 


108  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

combatants  who  in  time  became  the  majority  even  of  the 
males.  These  having  never  handled  a  tool  of  war,  nor 
cultivated  even  their  natural  lethal  powers,  became  as 
helpless  as  lambs  or  nestlings,  and  distracted  the  social 
system  by  a  double  standard  of  ethics,  one  code  crying 
that  homicide  was  murder  and  the  other  that  when  nation- 
alized it  was  a  glory.  And  what  made  confusion  worse 
confounded  was  that  it  was  the  civilians  who  were  apt  to 
idealize  war  and  to  flatter  their  protectors  with  poems  and 
titles,  while  the  soldiers  tended  to  value  most  the  civilization 
which  they  defended. 

So  long,  however,  as  man  confined  himself  to  simple 
weapons,  fighting  remained  human  and  natural.  Weapons 
that  do  not  leave  the  hand  are  merely  an  extension  of  it. 
The  sword  and  the  swordsman,  arms  and  the  man,  are  one. 
For  by  the  psychological  "law  of  eccentricity"  our  sense 
of  our  personality  extends  to  the  tip  of  whatever  we  hold. 
Even  arrows  and  bullets  that  found  their  billet  within  a 
visible  range  of  yards  left  some  sense  of  corporeal  partici- 
pation. If  the  effect  was  greater  than  the  effort,  it  was  at 
least  humanly  measurable;  the  enemy  could  be  seen  and 
hated.  But  with  the  coming  of  cannon  all  the  human  side 
of  war  vanished.  The  elephant's  trunk,  as  every  schoolboy 
knows,  can  pick  up  a  pin  and  uproot  a  tree.  But  it  does 
not  uproot  the  tree  without  a  living  straining  sense  of  the 
reality  of  the  operation.  The  firer  of  the  latest  24-inch 
Austrian  mortar,  by  an  effort  no  greater  than  the  picking 
up  of  a  pin,  uprooted  a  tower  eleven  miles  off  with  his  first 
shot.  The  cataclysm  evoked  by  a  gunner  utterly  transcends 
his  own  muscles,  perceptions  or  emotions.  He  is  an  un- 
feeling and  therefore  immoral  agent  of  destruction.  He  has 
sunk  from  a  man  to  a  mechanism.  Such  a  fury  of  malef- 
icence as  would  wear  out  a  tiger  in  an  instant — it  actually 
wears  out  a  1 2-inch  gun  in  twelve  seconds — leaves  the 


ARMS   AND   THE   MAN  I OQ 

gunner  coolly  renewing  his  inner  tube.  Had  this  colossal 
killing-power  been  developed  inside  and  not  outside  his  own 
organism,  man — unless  he  became  a  mere  appendix  to  his 
own  hypertrophied  lethal  organ — would  have  had  to  grow 
proportionately  in  bulk,  in  feeling,  and  in  brain.  Not  even 
Swift's  Brobdingnagians,  whose  swords  were  forty  feet  long, 
would  have  sufficed  to  embody  a  duct  that  at  one  discharge 
can  kill  off  thirty  horses  miles  away  and  scoop  a  hole  huge 
enough  for  their  sepulture.  To  dare  serve  a  Krupp  or 
Armstrong  gun,  one  should  be  as  tall  as  an  Alp,  as  good 
as  an  Angel,  as  wise  as  a  God.  A  man  lives  up  to  the  ex- 
treme height  of  his  moral  and  physical  nature  when  he 
dares  to  loose  an  arrow  from  the  bow-string.1 

But  Time  will  not  be  cheated  and  Nature  has  not  gone 
unavenged.  If  the  forces  man  sets  in  action  transcend  his 
sensorium,  they  also  surpass  its  endurance.  Throughout 
Nature — which  is  perpetual  war — the  forces  to  be  resisted 
are  to  every  creature  constant  and  familiar.  But  man's 
war,  which  is  spasmodic  and  discontinuous,  is  an  Inferno 
beyond  the  worst  dreams  of  Dante,  to  which  our  nervous 
system  is  quite  unequated.  Men  trained  in  peace,  or  even 
for  it,  are  suddenly  swathed  in  lyddite  fumes  from  shells,  or 
asphyxiating  gases  from  cylinders,  bespattered  with  flying 
brains  and  bowels  and  limbs,  tortured  by  the  groans  of  their 
comrades  agonizing  helplessly  between  the  rival  trenches, 
or  by  the  odor  of  their  putrefaction,  and  deafened  by  the 
screech  and  thunder  of  great  guns  roaring  for  their  prey. 

1  It  may  be  urged  that  the  hand  that  serves  _  the  gun  is  really  but  one  of 
the  hands  of  the  race,  which  is  Briarean  manually  and  also — by  the  size  of 
its  united  legs — Alpine.  This  perhaps  makes  the  distinction  between  murder 
and  killing  in  war.  It  would  only  be  if  a  man  used  a  gun  for  his  private  ends 
that  it  would  be  murder,  and  this  consideration  might  be  pointed  out  to  the 
"conscientious  objector"  who  "objects  to  murdering."  On  the  other  hand, 
even  the  race  united  can  hardly  be  said  to  possess  the  goodness  or  omnis- 
cience qualifying  them  to  serve  a  Krupp  gun. 


110  THE   WAR   FOR   THE    WORLD 

What  wonder  if  in  such  a  hellish  hurly-burly  the  higher 
nerve-centres  are  disintegrated,  and  men  revert  to  a  primi- 
tive somnambulistic  sub-consciousness,  deaf,  dumb,  and 
blind;  or  if,  as  Professor  Gaupp  tells  us,  the  stoutest  Prus- 
sian soldiers  break  down  in  madness,  paralysis,  convulsions, 
aphasia,  and  delirium?  l  For  it  is  an  environment  out  of 
all  relation  to  our  nervous  system,  more  dreadful  than 
Mother  Nature  has  set  any  creature  to  face.  Had  we  at 
least  evolved  our  own  shelling  apparatus  or  poison-gland, 
the  rest  of  our  organism  would  have  evolved  pari  passu 
and  our  cells  and  ganglions  would  have  accommodated 
themselves  in  the  course  of  the  aeons  to  our  lethal  organ. 
But  in  our  fatal  haste  to  grasp  at  results,  in  our  severance 
of  arms  and  the  man,  we  have  entirely  outreached  and  out- 
gone ourselves.  Even  those  who  can  habituate  their  nerves 
to  this  man-made  hell  cannot  bequeath  their  equilibrium. 

Is  it  not  high  time  that — with  the  exception  of  a  few  rifles 
against  the  animals  we  have  still  left  our  superiors — we 
humans  should  use  up  our  bombs  to  blow  up  all  our  other 
armaments,  and  if  we  must  needs  quarrel  among  ourselves, 
return  to  fisticuffs?  2 

1  See  also  Major  Mott's  Lettsonian  Lecture,  before  the  Medical  Society 
of  London,  on  "The  Effects  of  High  Explosives  on  the  Central  Nervous 
System." 

2 1  was  walking  in  the  Wordsworth  country  with  a  world-famous  chemist, 
when,  discussing  disapprovingly  the  misapplications  of  chemistry  to  war 
and  the  ceaseless  quest  for  still  greater  powers  of  destruction,  he  suddenly 
startled  me  by  saying  "They  might  blow  up  the  world."  He  meant  seriously 
that  radium  had  disclosed  such  unexpected  new  forces  with  which  the 
chemists  might  accidentally  interfere.  I  could  not  help  thinking  that  it 
would  be  a  very  fitting  ending  for  our  murderous  breed,  though  I  hoped  it 
would  be  German  "efficiency"  that  would  do  the  deed. 


THE  RUINED  ROMANTICS 

"Clear-singing,  clean  slicing; 

Sweet-spoken,  soft-finishing, 
Making  death  beautiful. 
I  am  the  Will  of  God, 
I  am  the  Sword." 

HENLEY'S  Song  of  the  Sword. 


That  is  what  the  poet  used  to  sing.  "I  am  the  gas-bag" 
would  be  nearer  the  mark  to-day.  And  for  the  protagonist 
of  the  defence:  "I  am  the  sand-bag."  The  sword  is 
obsolescent.  Some  Italian  troops  use  the  heavy  four-foot 
daga  but  the  British  officer  mostly  finds  his  sword  an  en- 
cumbrance, and  its  chief  use  now  in  England  is  as  an  orna- 
ment for  civilians  at  Court  receptions.  "The  Will  of  God" 
is  now  the  Zeppelin  bomb,  the  asphyxiating  gas,  the  torpedo, 
or  the  liquid  fire  of  the  German  squirters,  the  results  of 
which  at  Ypres,  according  to  a  British  officer  interviewed 
by  the  Liverpool  Daily  Post  was  to  burn  our  soldiers'  faces 
"out  of  all  recognition  to  the  human  form."  And  the  pic- 
ture of  our  troops  before  the  advancing  flames  is  a  grim 
transformation  of  our  traditional  war-pictures — this  "line 
of  men  as  far  along  as  one  could  see,  mopping  their  brows, 
from  which  sweat  was  streaming:"  this  combination  of 
Hell  and  the  Turkish  Bath,  relieved  only  by  the  irrepressible 
humor  of  the  private,  who  opined  that  so  much  sweat  would 
put  out  the  fires  by  the  time  they  reached  the  ranks. 

The  romantic  Ruskin,  writing  in  1864,  warned  our  sol- 
diers that  they  "were  never  meant  to  be  blown  out  of  en- 

iii 


112  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

gines  nor  to  fight  by  chemistry"  and  predicted  that  at  the 
rate  they  were  going  they  would  soon  come  to  poisoned 
bullets.  Civilized  nations,  he  laid  it  down,  "  should  settle 
their  quarrels  as  civilized  men  do,  on  terms,  and  with  choice 
of  weapons."  Modern  warfare  was  unchivalrous — as  if 
duellists  should  throw  vitriol  in  each  other's  faces.  The 
logical  Junker,  to  whom  war  was  not  a  theatrical  tourna- 
ment, but  a  scientific  ruthlessness,  answered  like  the  man 
on  London  Bridge  in  "One  of  Our  Conquerors,"  "none  of 
your  damn  punctilio."  And  in  the  end  humanity  may  be 
grateful  to  him  for  having  stripped  war  of  its  last  veil  of 
chivalry  and  cast  upon  its  crude  nakedness  the  searchlight 
of  hell.  Now  we  can  say  of  war,  as  Dryden  said  of  Vice, 
that  it  is 

"A  monster  of  such  fearful  mien 
As  to  be  hated  needs  but  to  be  seen." 

But  more  corrosive  to  the  war-ideal  than  even  the  vitriol 
Ruskin  thought  ungentlemanly,  is  the  tedium  of  the 
trenches.  "War  has  become  stupid,  war  is  dull"  complains 
the  Times  military  correspondent,  and  the  men  yawn  with 
him.  War  in  fact  is  as  dull  as  the  ditchwater  in  which  the 
men  stand,  and  Romance  has  been  driven  literally  to  her 
last  ditch.  In  the  words  of  Punch 

"Don't  picture  battle-pieces  by  the  lurid  Press  adored, 
But  miles  and  miles  of  Britishers  in  burrows  badly  bored." 

Here  then  lies  a  new  hope  for  humanity.  War  is  worse 
than  a  crime,  it  is  a  bore.1 

1  "One  of  the  first  elements  of  successful  strategy  is  surprise.  In  the  old 
days  a  general  of  genius  could  outflank  his  foe  by  a  forced  march  or  lay 
some  ingenious  trap  or  ambush.  But  how  can  you  outflank  a  foe  who  has 
no  flanks?  How  can  you  lay  an  ambush  for  the  modern  Intelligence  De- 
partment, with  its  aeroplane  reconnaissance  and  telephonic  nervous  sys- 
tem? .  .  .  What  could  Napoleon  himself  have  done  under  the  circum- 
stances? One  is  inclined  to  suspect  that  that  volcanic  megalomaniac  would 


THE  RUINED  ROMANTICS  113 

n 

And — as  if  in  symbolic  harmony — the  colors  of  war  are 
faded  too.  The  prosaic  necessity  of  invisibility  has  ousted 
the  peacock  vainglory  and  the  rainbow  pride.  The  tartan — 
our  last  symbol  of  the  joy  of  battle — will  scarcely  enliven 
another  war.  Khaki  like  a  yellow  fog  swathes  everything— 
it  is  for  romance  The  Yellow  Peril.  True,  the  Germans 
still  keep  touches  of  the  old  palette.  Mr.  Powell's  unfor- 
getable  picture  of  the  German  Entry  into  Antwerp  gave 
us  glimpses  of  burnished  steel,  befrogged  jackets  and  fur 
busbies  and  silver-gray  and  bottle-green  uniforms,  and  some 
of  the  French  too  are  in  the  key  of  blue.  But  a  day  in  the 
clay  and  ooze  of  the  trenches  sadly  tarnishes  this  bravery. 
And  even  the  cavalry — sesquipedalian,  flamboyant — must 
crouch  as  mere  bipeds. 

Indeed,  M.  Georges  Scott,  the  artist,  laments  that 
"modern  warfare  has  absolutely  nothing  to  do  with  colors. 
It  is  a  symphony  in  sound.  .  .  .  The  war  is  the  end  of  the 
battle-painter  since,  apart  from  curiously  lucky  circum- 
stances, there  is  absolutely  nothing  to  paint."  "This  war/' 
says  the  Times  correspondent  briefly,  "is  anonymous  and 
invisible  .  .  .  the  butchery  of  the  unknown  by  the  unseen." 

But  perhaps  the  subtlest  force  that  is  sapping  what 
James  Grant  called  "The  Romance  of  War"  is  the  belated 
recognition  that  the  soldier  is  only  one  of  its  factors. 
General  Petain  himself,  the  heroic  defender  of  Verdun, 
says  it  is  "a  war  of  Workshops."  And  it  is  by  an  irony  of 
history  that  on  the  very  day  Conscription  entered  the 
British  Calendar,  our  war-lord,  our  grim  English  Odin, 
Kitchener,  was  forced  to  preach  economy  to  the  nation  in 
the  civic  Guildhall.1 

have  perished  of  spontaneous  combustion  of  the  brain." — The  First  Hundred 
Thousand,  by  Ian  Hay. 
1  "We  have  two  great  armies  now"  he  said,  "not  only  the  army  in  the 


114  THE  WAR   FOR  THE  WORLD 

The  humor  of  these  appeals  for  economy  is  fit  to  make  the 
angels  weep.  "The  cost  of  the  shells  fired  at  Suchez"  says 
the  official  report,  "would  suffice  to  build  it  up  again  fifty 
or  a  hundred  times."  This  is  not  to  consider  the  cost  of 
keeping  the  armies  there  to  fire  them.  And  Mr.  Pollen 
tells  us  that  a  light  craft  like  the  sentinel  Arethusa  uses  up 
ten  times  the  horse-power  that  keeps  going  a  great  northern 
factory,  with  two  to  three  thousand  hands. 

Ill 

It  is  a  pity  that  just  when  the  steed  and  the  sword  were 
vanishing,  air-ships  and  submarines  should  come  to  restore 
the  lost  picturesqueness  of  war.  But  even  at  its  most 
spectacular,  war  is  for  most  civilized  people  a  mere  savage 
survival.  The  very  laborers  in  my  village  remark  that  they 
thought  we  had  outgrown  it.  "Oi  did  think  us  had  grown 
past  that  at  this  toime  o'day."  1  They  do  not  know  Dr. 
Keith's  demonstration  that  man  is  at  least  a  million  years 
old.  But  they  feel  instinctively  that  he  is  old  enough  to 
know  better.2 

field,  but  the  other  army,  consisting  of  the  whole  of  the  civil  population  at 
home — and  the  army  in  the  field"  he  confessed  bathetically,  "could  not  last 
a  single  day  without  the  efforts  of  the  civilian  population  behind  it."  Poor 
Romance!  Economy,  the  most  bourgeois  of  the  virtues,  is  then  as  martial  as 
daredeviltry.  Even  the  urchin  who  refuses  to  have  his  face  washed  is  saving 
soap,  which  seems,  like  everything  else,  including  milk,  to  be  convertible 
into  explosives  by  our  chemical  devils,  the  milk  of  human  kindness  curdled 
indeed! 

1  Mr.  Roger  Fry  after  a  recent  visit  to  France  reports  the  same  thing,  that 
the  peasants  regard  war  as  an  anachronism.    "  C'est  trop  bete,  la  guerre." 

2  "I  am  watching  this  war  in  its  effects  upon  the  masses.    I  believe  that 
never  before  in  the  history  of  the  world  was  the  futility  of  war  seen  more 
clearly  by  democracy.    The  miner  in  the  Aberdare  village  no  longer  regards 
the  miner  elsewhere  as  an  enemy  or  a  'furriner,'  and  he  is  asking  himself 
now,  'what  is  the  good  of  war?'    And  the  answer  he  makes  is  'Rotten.' " 
GENERAL  BRAMWELL  BOOTH,  interviewed  by  Harold  Begbie.  Daily  Chronicle, 
March  8,  1916. 


THE  RUINED  ROMANTICS  115 

"I  call  it  'orse-play,"  said  the  indignant  soldier  in  Punch, 
when  he  was  toppled  over  by  a  shell  and  covered  with 
earth.  That  one  of  Punch's  immortal  words,  "  'Orse-play " 
is  exactly  what  war  is — a  tragically  gigantic  gambolling,  a 
super-shoving  and  hustling,  a  lubberly  cyclopean  sky- 
larking, a  Brobdingnagian  snowballing.1  The  larrikins  of 
literature,  the  hooligan  Bernhardis,  the  Peter  Pans  of 
poetry  may  imagine  war  vitally  important,  but  in  essence  it 
is  a  Titanic  tomfoolery  that  is  noisy  without  being  funny. 
And  withal  so  irrelevant  to  the  real  war  for  the  world.  I 
never  felt  this  so  strongly  as  when,  turning  from  the  news- 
papers, I  read  Henry  James's  novel:  The  Ambassadors; 
whereof  I  wrote,  "It  makes  the  war-books  ridiculous.  A 
world,  which  has  arrived  at  such  fineness  of  impression  and 
such  depths  of  spiritual  beauty  as  are  evidenced  in  this 
masterpiece  has  no  more  to  do  with  crude  cannon-balls  and 
silly  shells  than  wolves  and  tigers  have  to  do  with  the  Ninth 
Symphony  or  the  differential  calculus." 

IV 

No,  for  those  who  have  "the  joy  of  battle,"  war  may  be 
natural  enough. 

"Let  dogs  delight  to  bark  and  bite 
For  'tis  their  nature  to." 

But  let  us  leave  it  to  the  Serbians,  any  of  whom  would 
gladly  die  if  he  could  spit  two  Bulgarians  on  one  spear,2 
to  the  Montenegrins,  or  the  Senegalese  who  collect  ears 

1  Since  this  was  written  "avalanche"  warfare  has  actually  begun. 

2  "They  seemed  to  be  obsessed  with  a  determination  to  get  their  bayonets 
into  the  Bulgarians'  bodies,  laughing  at  them  as  their  foes  lay  mortally 
wounded  on  the  ground.     Detached  groups  at  a  hundred  places  along  the 
battle  front,  stabbed,  clubbed,  bit  and  choked  savagely."— Louis  EDGAR 
BROWN,  quoted  in  Times,  December  22,  1915. 


Il6  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

and  noses  as  the  Red  Indians  collected  the  scalps,  to  the 
Turcos,  two  hundred  of  whom,  according  to  the  Gaulois, 
slid  secretly  on  their  stomachs  and  bayoneted  seven  hun- 
dred and  ninety-two  Boches  in  ten  minutes.  For  these 
and  their  likes — e.  g.,  the  British  cavalry  officer  who  wrote 
home  "We  had  an  amusing  time,  chasing  Uhlans" — war  is  a 
glorious  romp:  and  for  them  it  may  be  as  Kipling  says,  "The 
lordliest  life  on  earth."  Far  otherwise  is  it  with  the  likes  of 
the  poor  Professor  of  Latin  at  the  University  of  Bonn 
whose  diary,  published  in  the  Times,  revealed  the  pitiful 
slavery  of  the  private's  life  under  jackboot  Junkerdom.  A 
typical  entry  (September  27th)  says:  "One  gets  stunted  in- 
tellectually. One  has  no  longer  a  single  idea  except  to  keep 
going  physically.  Always  the  same  longing  for  peace,  and 
before  my  eyes  the  spectre  of  the  French  front  close  at 
hand,  with  the  horrors  of  its  artillery  fire." 

There  is  a  German  proverb  about  not  chopping  up  the 
piano  to  light  the  fire.  Imagine  using  a  University  Professor 
for  Kanonenf utter . 


"Glory  of  war"  writes  a  Colonial  from  the  Dardanelles, 
"  is  a  thing  of  the  past."  And  indeed  nearly  every  one  of 
my  own  acquaintances  at  the  Dardanelles  was  down  with 
dysentery,  which  does  not  seem  to  be  even  counted  in  the 
casualties,  unless  death  lends  it  a  little  dignity. 

Early  in  the  war — through  my  perilous  habit  of  "walking 
in  war-time" — I  was  captured  by  a  British  officer  and  made 
to  address  his  men.  The  khaki  congregation,  young  re- 
cruits in  all  the  pride  of  life  and  limb,  squatted  in  the 
meadow  and  I  stood,  like  Abraham  of  old,  in  the  door  of  a 
tent.  It  was  a  picturesque  scene,  growing  more  romantic 
as  the  light  faded  and  my  discourse  soared  to  the  stars  that 
came  out  to  listen.  I  spoke  of  national  righteousness,  of 


THE  RUINED  ROMANTICS  1 17 

duty,  and  glory,  and  how  they  must  shame  the  Goths  by 
chivalry  to  their  women  and  children.  "Thank  you,  thank 
you,"  cried  the  Captain,  fervently  grasping  my  hand,  when 
my  heroic  accents  died  on  the  perfumed  darkness  of  the 
summer  night.  "You  have  saved  me  my  evening  exhorta- 
tion. I  was  about  to  address  them  on  lice!"  How  many 
of  these  young  knight-errants  have  since  been  infected  with 
typhus  by  these  unromantic  insects  I  know  not,  but  it  is  the 
pediculi  more  than  the  Germans  that  have  devastated 
Serbia.  ' l  They  have  practically  taken  possession  of  Serbia, ' ' 
wrote  a  doctor  to  the  Times.  "Rats  and  lice  enjoy  this 
warm  weather,"  writes  a  British  soldier  from  a  front  trench 
in  Flanders. 

"The  lordliest  life  on  earth" — or  the  lousiest — appears 
also  to  lead  to  insanity — whether  the  madness  of  melancholia 
or  of  terror.  The  Austrian  asylum  of  Steinhof  has  had  to 
be  enlarged  to  receive  the  patients  from  the  front.  And  this 
lordly  life  has  begotten  new  diseases — now  a  novel  form 
of  neuritis,  anon  a  trench  fever  credited  to  the  bites  of  body 
parasites — the  real  lordly  livers.  The  old  diseases  of  course 
flourish  more  vigorously  than  ever — the  list  reads  like  one 
of  the  passages  Zola  penned  so  unctuously  in  Lourdes: 
"Typhoid,  tetanus,  paratyphoid  A  and  B,  jaundice,  dys- 
entery, spotted  fever." 

The  marvel  is  that  madness  does  not  overtake  whole 
battalions.  For  not  in  Dante's  Inferno,  nor  in  Poe  at  his 
most  gruesome,  nor  in  all  the  literature  of  horror,  nor  in 
the  wildest  pictures  of  Wiertz  can  anything  be  found  even 
to  equal  the  simple  statements  of  the  war-reports.  In  the 
Artois,  says  Mr.  Buchan,  "the  French  parapets  are  prac- 
tically composed  of  dead  Germans."  We  read  of  valleys 
turning  "in  to  volcanos,  of  "heads  and  limbs  flying  in  all 
directions,"  "of  men  wading  through  a  sunlit  blue  sea  that 
turns  red,  of  chips  of  Alpine  granite  blinding  seventy  thou- 


Il8  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

sand  Austrians  in  six  months,  of  ravines  solidified  with  stand- 
ing corpses.  "  There  were  bunches  of  corpses  caught  upon 
our  barbed  wire  defences,"  says  a  French  war  report.  There 
are  all  manner  of  wounds,  writes  Mr.  Alfred  Stead  in  the 
Daily  Express — "men  without  the  bottom  of  their  faces, 
men  who  have  lost  noses,  eyes  and  ears.  .  .  .  The  smell 
of  blood  was  heavy  in  the  church,  the  incense  of  the  world 
to  the  God  of  War — that  sickening  smell  which  affects 
even  the  surgeons  more  than  the  most  horrible  wounds.  .  V  V 
In  the  space  before  the  altar  were  the  worst  cases.  When  I 
went  in,  there  were  four  dying  in  agony,  the  cries,  despite 
injections  of  morphia  being  frightful,  and  the  writhing 
limbs  and  convulsed  features  unforgettable.  They  all  died 
in  the  night." 

"Then  hell  broke  loose,"  writes  the  London  News  Agency 
of  the  fight  at  Neuve  Chapelle,  " .  .  .  in  some  places  the 
troops  were  smothered  in  earth  and  dust,  or  even  spattered 
with  blood  from  the  hideous  fragments  of  human  bodies 
that  went  hurtling  through  the  air.  At  one  point  the  upper 
half  of  a  German  officer,  his  cap  crammed  on  his  head, 
was  blown  into  one  of  our  trenches. 

"The  slaughter  was  sickening.  In  front  of  one  of  the  bri- 
gades the  Bavarians,  coming  along  at  the  ambling  trot 
adopted  by  the  German  infantry  at  the  assault,  and  bawling 
'Hourra!'  in  the  approved  fashion,  blundered  into  the  fire 
of  no  fewer  than  2 1  machine  guns.  The  files  of  men  did  not 
recede  or  stagger.  They  were  just  swept  away.  One 
moment  one  had  the  shouting,  ambling  crowd  before  one's 
eyes;  the  next  moment,  where  it  had  been,  lay  a  writhing, 
convulsed  pile  of  bodies  heaped  up  on  the  brown  earth." 
Karl  von  Wiegand  writes  from  Isonzo  to  the  New  York 
World:  "The  south-western  knob  of  San  Michele  is  known 
as  the  '  Mountain  of  Corpses'  from  the  heaps  of  Italian  dead 
there  in  front  of  the  Austro-Hungarian  trenches,  into  which 


THE   RUINED  ROMANTICS  1 19 

is  flung  a  veritable  hail  of  shells,  at  times  rending,  tearing, 
and  throwing  fragments  of  the  long  dead  in  all  directions, 
a  picture  declared  to  be  beyond  imagination  in  ghastliness 
and  stench. "  Even  the  cemeteries  are  shelled,  according  to 
Lord  Northcliffe,  and  one  sees  open  coffins,  shrouded  corpses 
and  grinning  skulls. 

The  explosion  of  a  mine  underground,  writes  a  Petrograd 
correspondent,  "  leaves  no  sign  above  ground  of  the  awful 
catastrophe  that  has  occurred  below.  The  horrors  of  such 
fighting  defy  the  imagination  and  cannot  be  described  by 
those  who  have  survived."  It  is  mechanical  murder. 
Similar  unspeakable  horrors,  I  remember,  with  no  sporting 
chance  of  romantic  defence,  were  recorded  by  the  Times 
of  the  bombardment  of  the  Bliicher,  as  the  effects  of  our 
shells  exploding  in  confined  space,  dreadful  blastings  and 
hurlings,  and  bodies  cut  in  two  by  closing  hatches.1  A 
French  soldier  presses  a  button  and  explodes  a  mine  as  a 
German  division  is  going  through  the  Bois  des  Caures — 
and  the  division  appears.  I  know  nothing  in  literature 
surpassing  the  simple  words  of  the  Paris  journalist:  "A 
tremendous  'bourn.'  Trees  mixed  with  strange  shapes 

1 "  In  the  engine-room  a  shell  licked  up  the  oil  and  sprayed  it  around  in 
flames  of  blue  and  green,  scarring  its  victims  and  blazing  where  it  fell.  Men 
huddled  together  hi  dark  compartments,  but  the  shells  sought  them  out,  and 
there  death  had  a  rich  harvest. 

"  The  terrific  air  pressure  resulting  from  explosion  hi  a  confined  space,  left  a 
deep  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  men  in  the  Bliicher  .  .  .  Closed  iron 
doors  bend  outward  like  tinplates,  and  through  it  all  the  bodies  of  men  are 
whirled  about  like  dead  leaves  in  a  winter  blast,  to  be  battered  to  death 
against  the  iron  walls. 

"There  were  shuddering  horrors,  intensified  by  the  darkness  or  semi-gloom. 
As  one  poor  wretch  was  passing  through  a  trap-door  a  shell  burst  near  him. 
He  was  exactly  half-way  through.  The  trap-door  closed  with  a  terrific 
snap.  In  one  of  the  engine-rooms  men  were  picked  up  by  that  terrible 
Luftdruck,  like  the  whirl-drift  at  a  street  corner,  and  tossed  to  a  horrible 
death  amidst  the  machinery.  There  were  other  horrors  too  fearful  to  re- 
count." (Times,  February,  1915.) 


120  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

sprang  into  the  air.  Terrible  cries  were  heard  and  then  the 
silence  of  death."  Another  version  of  a  similar  pressing 
of  a  button  (reported  by  the  Petit  Journal)  says  the  effect 
was  "like  an  infernal  waterspout  amid  this  human  sea. 
And  through  the  whirlwind  of  smoke,  iron  and  fire,  I  see 
faces  horribly  distorted,  arms,  legs  and  trunks  of  men 
hurled  high  in  the  air  as  though  cast  into  the  sky  from  a 
diabolic  volcano.  The  wave  of  Germans  advancing  like 
a  great  avalanche  and  singing  the  Wacht  am  Rhein  is 
broken,  and  a  vast  crater  is  filled  with  German  corpses." 
"Day  and  night/'  says  the  diary  of  a  German  officer,  "our 
hands  and  our  feet  were,  at  every  moment,  coming  in 
contact  with  unnameable  things  that  had  once  been  human 
bodies.  When  you  stand  behind  a  barrier,  four  men  deep 
of  these  horrible  things — " 

The  notion  of  distributing  V.  C.'s  or  Iron  Crosses  under 
such  conditions  is  an  anachronism,  a  relic  of  old  romance. 
The  heroism  of  humanity  simply  takes  my  breath  away. 
Every  man  in  the  trenches  is  a  hero,  braver  than  Agamem- 
non. Or  perhaps  the  truth  is  that  no  man  is  a  hero.  Cour- 
age can  be  acquired  by  practice,  it  can  be  taught,  writes  a 
British  officer.  Who  does  not  remember  Turenne  saying 
to  his  body:  "Tremblest  thou?  Thou  shalt  tremble  still 
more  before  I  have  done  with  thee!"  According  to  a  Ger- 
man pyschologist,  the  soldiers  in  the  trenches  revert  to  sub- 
humanity.  Caught  between  their  officers  and  overlords 
behind,  and  the  vomiting  iron  jaws  in  front,  they  develop 
a  sombre  sense  of  fatality,  and  move  like  somnambulists  to- 
wards their  appointed  doom. 

VI 

Nor  are  the  effects  of  war  outside  the  camps  altogether  as 
ennobling  as  the  Romantics  pretend.  Mixed  with  a  great 


THE   RUINED   ROMANTICS  121 

uplifting  of  the  nation  in  sacrifice  and  goodwill,  and  a  re- 
newed sense  of  nationality,  and  a  healthy  trans-valuation 
of  values,  is  also  a  sordid  greed  on  the  part  of  a  large  com- 
mercial minority  that — incredible  as  it  sounds — would 
rather  see  profit  than  Peace.1  The  moral  consciousness 
and  political  sense  of  the  nation  disintegrate  and  every- 
thing is  sacrificed  to  the  elemental  passion  for  victory. 
To  hear  hecatombs  of  our  enemies  and  the  shipwreck  of 
their  argosies  gives  us  a  living  satisfaction.  The  sense  of 
reality  is  dulled,  catas trophies  that  would  have  set  Emperors 
and  Presidents  cabling  condolences  no  longer  stir  the 
faintest  thrill  of  sympathy.  In  England  there  is,  according 
to  the  Times,  a  "  Heavy  toll  on  child  life  indirectly  traceable 
to  the  war/'  a  "dangerous  wastage."  But  in  Germany 
and  England  a  serious  degeneration  of  school-children  is 
noted,  alleged  to  be  due  to  the  absence  of  the  fathers.  The 
Cologne  Gazette  says  that  crimes  of  violence  have  increased 
alarmingly  in  young  people  of  both  sexes  between  sixteen 
and  twenty-six,  and  the  Governor  of  Cologne  draws  the 
attention  of  the  municipality  to  the  outbreak  of  pickpocket- 
ing  by  boys  of  from  five  to  ten,  while  boys  of  from  eight  to 
twelve  are  becoming  skilled  cracksmen.  The  Berliner 
Tageblatt  says  "the  German  people  are  in  danger  of  being 
wholly  submerged  beneath  the  extraordinary  wave  of  laxity 
and  immorality  that  is  breaking  over  the  country."  The 
Deutsche  Tages  Zeitung  describes  the  "appalling  amount  of 
open  and  flagrant  immorality,"  and  ascribes  it  to  the 
high  wages  young  people  are  getting  in  factories.  But  in  the 
rural  districts  also  all  sense  of  decency  is  being  swept  away. 
Drastic  sumptuary  laws  for  children  under  seventeen — 
tobacco,  snuff,  books  and  films, — are  being  everywhere 
enacted.  Cigars  and  alcohol  are  forbidden  to  children 

1  Twenty-five  per  cent  was  yesterday  paid  for  the  "risk"  of  peace  breaking 
out  before  the  end  of  the  year.    (Times,  March  17,  1916.) 


122  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

under  twelve.  Eugenically  of  course,  war  combines  a 
lowered  birth-rate  with  an  increased  death-rate  among  the 
most  virile  elements. 

VII 

"Shall  we  never  shed  blood?"  wistfully  wailed  that  incur- 
able Romantic,  Stevenson,  comrade  in  letters  of  the  author 
of  The  Song  of  the  Sword,  bedridden  both.  They  dreamed 
of  being  soldiers  because  they  were  invalids,  and  of  being 
seamen  because  they  were  not  able-bodied.1  It  is  to  be 
hoped  the  manes  of  these  " literary  gents"  are  satisfied  now. 
It  would  be  no  unfitting  hell  for  these  frivolous  Romantics 
to  be  compelled  to  witness  the  measureless  agony  of  this 
war,  the  suffering  of  mules  and  horses,  as  well  as  of  men, 
women  and  children;  the  illimitable  carnage  and  bestiality, 
the  insanities,  suicides,  hangings,  shootings,  crucifixions, 
buryings,  or  burnings  alive,  diseases,  exiles,  and  anguishes; 
to  hear  the  innumerable  moans  of  milkless  infants,  and  see 
every  gate  to  death  open  and  besieged  by  agonizing  queues. 
The  only  excuse  one  can  find  for  Henley  and  Stevenson 
(and  the  school  they  created)  is  that  they  had  no  imagina- 
tion. They  lived  remote  from  Mars  and  could  see  only 
its  ruddy  splendor. 

In  the  presence  of  the  war  itself  our  poets  are  dumb, 
or  if  they  speak  it  is  of  its  spiritual  inspirations,  its  intel- 
lectual ironies  or  its  psychological  incongruities.  Of  the 
old  joy  of  battle  there  is  not  a  trace.  The  poor  ruined 
Romantics!  Even  Kipling,  who  but  for  the  Grace  of  God 
might  have  been  Poet  Laureate  of  Prussia,  has  not  egged 
on  the  slaughter.  Indeed  with  the  close  of  the  South 
African  war  and  the  publication  of  his  great  pacificist  poem, 
The  Settler,  his  career  as  a  Tyrtaeus  seems  to  have  ended. 

1  There  died  the  other  day  another  of  Henley's  colleagues  on  the  National 
Observer  who  like  Henley  himself  was  a  cripple. 


THE   RUINED  ROMANTICS  123 

That  wonderful  poem — of  an  Old  Testament  greatness- 
is  Kipling's  real  Recessional.  And  his  vilification  of  the 
"senseless  bullet"  and  the  "barren  shrapnel,"  and  his 
glorification  of  the  "holy  wars"  of  united  mankind  against 
the  evils  of  Nature,  mark  the  public  bankruptcy  of  the 
ruined  Romantics. 


ON  THE  COAST 

"Let  me  fall  now  into  the  hand  of  the  Lord  .  .  .  but  let  me  not 
fall  into  the  hand  of  man." — (King  David's  Prayer.) 

"  Black  within  and  without 

Save  a  lamp-circle  falling 

On  that  page  that  at  midnight 

I  sit  peacefully  scrawling. 

"Crash  and  boom,  from  afar! 

Life  seems  suddenly  dearer! 
I  must  warn  all  the  household. 
Boom  and  crash — it  is  nearer. 

"Then  a  zigzagging  flash 

Splits  my  terror  asunder. 
Thank  God,  it  is  only 

His  lightning  and  thunder! " 


124 


THE  GODS  OF  GERMANY 

"Die  germanischen  Gottergestalten,  woran  freilich  kein  be- 
sonderer  Kunstsinn  gemodelt  hatte,  und  die  schon  vorher  so  miss- 
mutig  und  triibe  waren  wie  der  Norden  selbst." — HEINE. 

I. — THE  OLD  HEATHEN  GODS 

Hans  Richter,  the  great  conductor,  once  told  me  in  the 
days  when  the  deranging  of  London's  dinner  hour  by  "The 
Ring"  was  our  idea  of  a  sensational  event,  that  in  reading 
or  conducting  Wagner's  music  he  felt  himself  in  mystic 
union  with  the  old  gods  of  his  race.  But  who  were  these 
old  gods?  Tacitus,  who  has  left  us  a  valuable  study  of 
the  Germany  of  the  year  98,  and  who  records  incredulously 
the  rumor  that  there  were  German  tribes  with  human  faces 
but  the  bodies  and  limbs  of  wild  beasts,  reports  that  the 
chief  god  was  Mercury,  and  that  the  Germans  propitiated 
him  even  with  human  victims.  Now  Mercury,  from  whom 
comes  the  French  for  Wednesday,  was  merely  the  Roman 
name  for  the  Teutonic  Odin  or  Woden,  who  survives  in 
our  Wednesday.  Mercury  was  the  malevolent  god  of  com- 
merce and  gain,  and  Woden  conies  from  a  root  meaning 
the  furious  one;  so  that  the  worship  of  this  grim  old  German 
god  seems  accurately  to  foreshadow  the  contemporary 
combination  of  "Realpolitik"  with  Militarism. 

But  how  could  such  a  god  appeal  to  a  musician?  Rich- 
ter's  Odin  was  probably  the  Wagnerized  Wotan  of  the 
"Ring."  And  the  Norse  and  Icelandic  mythology  which 
Wagner  sophisticated  had  been  already  modified  by  radia- 
tions from  Christianity.  The  old  Teutonic  races  knew 
nothing  of  Valhalla  or  the  Valkyries — these  were  the  crea- 

125 


126  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

tions  of  poets  of  the  Viking  period  working  on  a  microscopic 
basis  of  folk-myth.  But  whatever  the  intellectual  falsi- 
fications and  fallacies  of  Wagner,  he  did  undoubtedly  set 
out  to  transcribe  the  German's  "own  indigenous  national 
world  of  feelings  and  tones,"  and  this  his  subconscious 
genius  effected  so  truly,  so  far  as  the  mere  music  was  con- 
cerned, as  to  send  the  old  racial  memories  vibrating  through 
his  fellow-Teuton's  soul,  deep  calling  unto  deep.  I  imagine, 
however,  that  what  Richter  felt  was  not  so  much  the  pres- 
ence of  definite  old  gods  as  the  absence  of  the  Christian. 
Heine  pictured  the  old  gods  as  going  into  exile  underground 
at  the  triumph  of  Christ.  Where  they  really  went  was 
under  consciousness.  As  they  had  never  had  any  life  out- 
side man's  mind,  so  now  they  became  not  subterranean  but 
subconscious.  And  it  was  these  submerged  strata  of  pre- 
Christian  feeling  that  Wagner  stirred  up  in  Richter. 

It  is  these  pre-Christian  strata  that,  under  the  inspiration 
of  German  philosophy,  now  threaten  to  rise  to  the  top  again 
— not  sublimated  as  art,  but  in  all  their  crude  reality — and 
to  resume  their  sway  over  the  mind  of  the  West,  nay,  to 
drive  it  to  those  extremes  of  barbarism  of  which  only  logic 
is  capable,  and  from  which  the  heathen,  in  his  simple  blind- 
ness, would  have  shrunk  in  horror.  That  it  was  the  old 
German  gods — "those  abortions  of  blood  and  mist" — who 
would  lead  this  assault  upon  Christian  civilization  was 
prophesied  by  Heine  in  that  marvellous  chapter  of  his  Ger- 
many, in  which  he  figured  the  German  philosopher  evoking 
the  demoniac  energies  of  old  Germanic  pantheism,  waken- 
ing the  ancient  Teutonic  battle-madness,  and  rousing  Thor 
from  his  thousand-year  sleep  to  shatter  the  Gothic  cathe- 
drals with  his  giant  hammer,  and  to  send  the  old  German 
thunder — "der  deutsche  Donner" — crashing  as  naught 
ever  crashed  before  in  the  whole  history  of  the  world. 
Felix  Dahn  and  the  German  novelists  of  the  seventies  had 


THE   GODS   OF   GERMANY  127 

begun  coquetting  with  the  old  gods  and  warriors,  but  by  an 
irony  of  history  it  was  Nietzsche  who  by  shaking  what  he 
called  "the  Semitic  slave-morality"  of  Christianity  paved 
the  way  not  for  the  supermorality  he  preached,  but  for  the 
ancient  barbarism. 

Christianity  was  not,  indeed,  difficult  to  shake.  A  late 
and  exotic  importation,  it  had  never  harmonized  with  the 
Western  temperament,  and  in  the  nomadic  warriors  of  the 
Northern  forests  it  was  a  mere  veneer.  Peculiarly  did  its 
universalism  clash  with  European  tribalism.  It  was  vain 
for  Paul  to  declare  that  there  should  be  neither  Jew  nor 
Greek,  neither  Scythian  nor  Barbarian.  Nature,  says  the 
Roman  poet,  will  return  even  if  driven  out  with  a  pitch- 
fork. Still  more  if  driven  out  with  a  dogma. 

By  dint  of  the  Roman  Empire,  and  through  its  spiritual 
afterglow,  the  Holy  Roman  Empire,  Christianity  did  indeed 
achieve  an  uneasy  universalism.  But  it  is  significant  that 
Germany  through  Luther  was  the  first  to  break  such  Euro- 
pean unity  as  had  been  attained  by  the  martyrs  and  thinkers 
of  Christendom.  For  whatever  be  the  merits  or  necessity 
of  Protestantism,  the  Reformation  was  as  much  a  reaction 
of  nationalisms  as  a  protest  against  the  corruptions  of  the 
Church  Universal.  The  treatises  of  Luther  mingled  criti- 
cisms of  the  Papacy  with  appeals  to  German  patriotism 
against  the  jurisdiction  of  a  foreign  Power.  In  Switzer- 
land Zwingli  likewise  combined  spiritual  reform  with  a 
political  protest  against  the  Pope's  claim  to  raise  a  Swiss 
levy.  Even  the  countries  that  remained  loyal  to  Rome 
could  only  be  handled  on  a  loose  rein.  As  for  England,  the 
jealous  national  spirit  not  only  shook  off  the  Pope  but  all 
possibility  of  communion  with  the  Reformed  Churches  of 
the  Continent.  How  deep  goes  the  British  instinct  against 
alien  domination  may  be  seen  from  the  shock  Thackeray 
received  when  on  his  Irish  journey  he  read  in  the  newspaper 


128  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

that  the  local  Bishop  had  just  been  consecrated  by  the 
Pope.  "Such  an  announcement,"  he  wrote  in  the  Irish 
Sketch  Book,  "sounds  quite  strange  in  English,  and  in  your 
own  country,  as  it  were;  or  isn't  it  your  own  country?" 
There  could  not  be  a  clearer  or  more  unconscious  identifi- 
cation of  religion  and  country.  National  boundaries  are 
felt  to  be  natural  boundaries.  Had  these  boundaries  been 
really  crossed  by  Christianity,  it  is  impossible  we  should 
witness  Christians  fighting  Christians,  still  less  Catholics 
fighting  Catholics,  or  Protestants  Protestants.  Everywhere 
the  old  national  religion  has  remained  latent  beneath  Chris- 
tianity, and  in  moments  of  peril  it  is  not  the  angels  that 
appear,  but  the  old  gods  of  the  race  upon  their  war-horses. 

So  long  as  this  atavistic  reversion  to  the  tribal  theology 
is  unconscious,  it  is  comparatively  innocuous.  It  leaves  the 
road  open  for  the  return  of  Christianity  when  the  war  ends. 
But  the  wilful  German  backsliding  to  heathenism  is  as 
dangerous  as  it  is  ridiculous.  Idolatry  is  catching.  Already 
we  have  George  Moore  crawling  underground — as  if 
Heine's  fantasy  was  a  geographical  reality — in  quest  of 
old  Irish  gods.  One  hears  too  of  fire-worshippers  and 
Diabolists.  Will  some  sophisticated  Syrian  revive  the 
cult  of  Astarte  or  some  intellectually  intoxicated  Greek  the 
Dionysiac  festivals?  Are  we  safe  even  from  the  Egyptian 
cat?  These  galvanizations  of  the  dead  past  are  as  grotesque 
as  that  "Primitive"  Art  which  chisels  with  a  swaggering 
simplicity  the  crude  wooden  dolls  that  were  the  savage's 
stride  towards  complexity.  To  religion,  as  to  art,  self- 
consciousness  is  fatal. 

II. — THE  NEW  STATE  IDOL 

Less  grotesque,  if  no  less  perilous,  is  the  German  move- 
ment, not  to  restore  old  gods,  but  to  give  new  lamps  for  old. 
Why  should  not  the  modern  spirit  be  as  creative  as  the 


THE   GODS   OF   GERMANY  1 29 

ancient?  This  is  essentially  Nietzsche's  question,  as  it  is 
the  "Leitmotif"  of  that  voluminous  work  by  Houston 
Chamberlain  which  the  Kaiser  distributed  so  lavishly. 
Why  be  beholden  for  your  religion  to  Jews,  if  indeed  Jesus 
was  not  a  German?  But  just  as  Nietzsche's  effort  at  con- 
struction only  achieved  destruction,  so  his  apotheosis  of 
aristocratic  individualism  has  been  answered  by  the  deepest 
abasement  of  the  individual  and  the  greatest  glorification 
of  the  herd  known  to  history  since  the  days  of  Sparta. 
Well  may  Nietzsche  denounce  the  State  as  the  coldest  of 
all  cold  monsters;  the  liar  that  says  "I  am  the  People"; 
the  piece  of  hellish  machinery,  the  "horse  of  death,  rattling 
in  the  attire  of  godlike  honors." 

Yet  it  is  in  this  "hellish  machinery"  that  Dr.  Stanton 
Coit,  of  our  own  Ethical  Church,  has  found  such  edification 
that  in  his  profound  book,  The  Soul  of  America,  he  adjured 
every  country  to  found  similar  State  religions.  We  are  to 
worship  each  our  own  national  spirit,  to  the  exclusion  even 
of  whatever  God  transcends  humanity.  For  every  institu- 
tion has  its  spirit — Eton,  Cambridge,  the  Carlton  Club — 
we  even  speak  of  esprit  de  corps  and  the  genius  loci — and  the 
spirit  of  the  nation  should  be  the  real  and  sufficing  centre 
of  religion.  It  is  a  notion  to  be  found  also  in  the  disciples  of 
Durkheim.1  But  this  religion  shatters  itself  like  neo- 

1  fimile  Durkheim  introduced  the  study  of  sociology  into  the  French 
Universities,  and  being  the  son  of  a  Rabbi  was  probably  inspired  by  his 
experience  of  Ghetto  tribalism,  which  is  a  reaction  from  Judaism  proper. 
It  is  perhaps  from  Durkheim  that  the  notion  of  group  gods,  even  of  village, 
street,  family  and  town  gods,  comes  into  French  literature  through  the 
poetry  of  Jules  Romains,  who  has  even  written 'a  First  Book  of  Prayers  to 
these  gods  that  transcend  and  transform  the  individual  will.  In  Russian 
literature  Dostoievsky's  preachment  of  "The  Russian  God"  preceded  these 
new-fangled  theses.  Though  the  title  of  a  popular  book  on  Burmah,  The 
Sotd  of  a  People  has  become  almost  a  cant  phrase  in  England,  where,  how- 
ever, Mr.  Lowes  Dickinson  falls  into  the  opposite  error  in  supposing  that 
individualism  is  the  sole  rational  basis  of  society. 


130  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

paganism  upon  the  rock  of  self-consciousness.  You  can 
sink  yourself  in  worship  of  a  God  believed  infinite  and  in- 
effable, but  hardly  in  one  whom  you  know  to  be  merely  the 
Spirit  of  your  tribe,  mutable  and  fallible.  And  how  if  it  is  an 
evil  spirit,  a  narrow  puffed-up  spirit?  French  patriotism, 
according  to  Heine,  expands  the  man,  warms  him  towards 
all  civilization,  whereas  "the  patriotism  of  the  German  is 
shown  by  his  heart  becoming  narrower  and  shrinking  up  and 
drawing  in  like  leather  in  a  frost."  And  how  well  Heine 
knew  his  countrymen  we  have  already  seen.  "Deutsch- 
land  ueber  alles" — that  Germany's  citizens  shall  put  her 
before  all  their  private  interests — is  a  creed  which  may 
be  better  for  them  than  none  at  all,  but  Prussian  patriotism 
is,  if  not  the  last  refuge  of  a  scoundrel,  the  last  refuge  of  an 
atheist.  Immune  from  any  standard  outside  itself,  it  easily 
slides  from  the  ideal  of  a  Germany  above  all  its  citizens  to 
the  ideal  of  a  Germany  above  all  the  world — a  mistransla- 
tion of  its  motto  into  action  which  justifies  the  current 
mistranslation  into  English. 

When  Fichte,  the  preacher  of  the  national  patriotic 
education  which  the  Kaiser  has  fostered,  delivered  his 
famous  " Addresses  to  the  German  Nation,"  in  1808,  the 
destiny  he  put  before  the  young  generation  was  "to  found 
an  Empire  of  Mind  and  Reason — to  destroy  the  dominion 
of  mere  physical  power."  But  Fichte  was  speaking  after 
Jena,  when  Prussia  lay  powerless  at  the  feet  of  Napoleon. 
The  grapes  were  sour.  As  soon  as  Moltke  provided  the 
sword  for  a  more  material  Empire,  the  inherent  viciousness 
of  State-idolatry  became  manifest.  Communal  egoism  is  no 
more  worshipful  than  individual.  Not  by  worshipping 
themselves  but  by  sacrificing  themselves  to  something 
conceived  as  larger  than  themselves,  have  nations  or  institu- 
tions become  saturated  with  the  spirit  of  greatness.  And  as 
the  individual  requires  the  State,  so  the  State  requires  the 


THE   GODS   OF   GERMANY  131 

world  and  the  great  international  ideals.  If  Dr.  Coit  over- 
looked this  fatal  defect  in  State-religion,  Prussia  has  prob- 
ably enlightened  him  by  now.1 

III.— THE  GERMAN  JEHOVAH 

But  there  is  still  another  German  theology,  and  that  the 
most  popular  of  all,  with  the  Kaiser  as  High  Priest.  There 
is  a  German  God — "der  deutsche  Gott" — who  has  often 
been  compared  to  the  old  "tribal"  Hebrew  God,  with 
Germany  in  the  role  of  Israel,  and  the  Hohenzollern  as  the 
Patriarchs.2  Were  there  truth  in  this  comparison,  Germany 
would  not  stand  alone  in  commandeering  Israel's  God. 
Did  not  Kipling  annex  Him  in  his  Song  of  the  English? 

For  the  Lord  our  God  most  high,  He  hath  made  the  deep  as  dry 
And  smote  for  us  a  pathway  to  the  ends  of  all  the  earth. 

And  the  liturgy  of  the  Established  Church  anticipated 
Kipling.  The  Romans  merely  took  Palestine.  The  English 
have  taken  the  whole  of  its  history  and  literature.3  But 
they  have  taken  it  because — despite  all  the  aberrations  and 
iniquities  of  Imperialism — it  represents  their  own  ideal  of 

1"We  do  not  stand  and  shall  not  place  ourselves  before  the  court  of 
Europe.  Our  power  shall  create  new  law  in  Europe.  Germany  strikes." 
(MAXIMILIAN  HARDEN.) 

Similarly  Thomas  Mann  claimed  that  this  is  a  war  of  Kultur  against 
civilization,  and  Friedrich  Gundolf  wrote:  "Wer  stark  ist  zu  schaffen,  der 
darf  auch  zerstoren." 

2  "Deutsche  religion"  seems  to  have  been  invented  by  Friedrich  Lange,  an 
ex-editor  of  the  Tagliche  Rundschau.  German  world-rule  as  the  rule  of  the 
German  spirit  is  the  note  of  Rohrbach.  That  the  coming  Emperor  of  Europe 
will  be  a  German  Emperor  is  the  thesis  of  Alfons  Paquet. 

*  A  wise  Englishwoman  writes:  "It  is  quite  true  but  that  only  shows  how 
much  deeper  is  our  humanity  than  our  nationality.  It  is  interesting,  though, 
that  in  our  little  village  I.  can  refer  with  more  certainty  of  response  to  the 
Book  of  Numbers  or  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  than  to  Shakespeare  or  the 
History  of  England." 


132  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

justice  for  all  races.  And  they  have  taken  it  with  its 
shadows  as  well  as  its  lights.  For  Israel  had  not  only  a 
sense  of  mission,  but  also  a  sense  of  sin.  Germany  has  only 
a  sense  of  mission:  no  German  Kipling  has  arisen  to  write 
her  Recessional.  "It  is  really  because  we  are  pure," 
Pastor  Fritz  Phillipi  told  his  Wiesbaden  flock, "  that  we  have 
been  chosen  by  the  Almighty  as  His  instruments  to  purify 
the  world."  "Not  for  thy  righteousness  or  for  the  upright- 
ness of  thy  heart,"  says  Deuteronomy,  "dost  thou  go  to 
possess  their  land:  but  for  the  wickedness  of  these  nations 
the  Lord  thy  God  doth  drive  them  out  from  before  thee." 
The  Bible  is,  in  fact,  one  long  indictment  of  the  Hebrew 
race.  But  outside  Nietzsche  we  look  in  vain  for  any  casti- 
gation  of  the  Prussian.1  The  Kaiser's  God  is  a  mere  carica- 

1  "We  are  morally  and  intellectually  superior  to  all  men.  We  are  peerless. 
So  too  are  our  organizations  and  institutions."  PROFESSOR  LASSON,  of 
Berlin. 

Herr  Basserman  even  applies  to  Treitschke  the  very  words  applied  by 
Jewish  tradition  to  Moses:  "A  divinely  gifted  narrator,  the  man  divinely 
appointed  to  show  to  our  children  and  grandchildren  the  greatness" — not  of 
God  or  His  Law  but — "of  the  German  nation!"  In  the  same  vein  Deputy 
Oertel  declared  that  "The  German  aim  of  the  war  is  the  fulfilment  and 
attainment  of  the  world-historical  goal  which  a  Higher  Being  has  placed 
before  the  Deutschtum."  Dr.  Ernst  Dryander,  the  First  Court  Preacher, 
wrote  an  open  letter  (published  in  L'Essor,  October  10,  1914)  to  a  French 
pastor  glorifying  God  for  the  perfection  of  the  German  and  all  that  is  his,  and 
rejoicing  in  His  "holy  wrath"  against  Germany's  enemies.  Professor 
Rheinold  Seeby,  who  teaches  theology  in  Berlin  University,  wrote  in  a 
magazine  article  that  Germany  loves  other  nations  and  when  she  punishes 
them  it  is  for  their  own  good.  Pastor  Vorwerk  has  re-written  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  ending  with:  "  Thine  is  the  Kingdom,  the  Germanland;  may  we,  by 
help  of  Thy  mailed  fist,  win  the  Power  and  the  Glory."  Compare  on  the  other 
hand  Milton's  modification  of  the  British  claim:  "What  does  He  then  but 
reveal  Himself  to  His  servants,  and  as  His  manner  is,  first  to  His  English- 
men; I  say  as  His  manner  is,  first  to  us,  though  we  mark  not  the  method 
of  His  Counsels  and  are  unworthy."  (Areopagitica.) 

These  quotations  whose  authenticity  is  beyond  question  make  it  unim- 
portant whether  other  preachers  have  said  literally  what  is  attributed  to 
them.  There  is  an  undoubted  stream  of  tendency  in  this  direction,  nor  is  any 
belligerent  country  free  from  it.  Herbert  Spencer  told  us  long  ago  of  the 


THE   GODS   OF   GERMANY  133 

ture  of  Jehovah,  for  it  is  a  gross  if  popular  error  that  the 
.*-•/  God  of  the  Old  Testament  was  a  tribal  deity  with  a  pet 
people.  The  very  first  line  of  Genesis  is  universal.  "In 
the  beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth." 
The  genealogy  of  all  races  and  colors  from  Adam  strikes  the 
same  broad  note,  while  Abraham,  the  founder  of  Judaism, 
actually  asks  God,  in  what  I  have  always  considered  the 
'r  epoch-making  sentence  in  the  Bible,  "Shall  not  the  Judge 
of  all  the  earth  do  right?"  A  righteous  God  is  not  a  tribal 
God  because  a  tribe  is  the  first  to  worship  Him.  Browning 
was  not  a  cliquey  poet  because  he  was  at  first  the  poet  of  a 
clique.  The  God  of  Abraham  could  no  more  be  kept  tribal 
than  electricity  could  be  kept  English  because  Faraday 
was.  Elijah  did  not  rail  against  Baal  as  an  alien  rival  god, 
but  as  an  abominable  idol. 

The  sense  of  a  mission  is  indeed  common  to  all  great 
nations.  For  Victor  Hugo  Paris  was  the  city  of  light,  to 
Mazzini  Italy  was  the  Messiah.  And  in  the  sense  of  Les- 
sing's  fable  of  the  three  rings,  the  world  has  only  to  gain 
by  this  competition  in  spiritual  greatness.  A  chosen  people 
is  merely  a  choosing  people,  a  self-consecrated  people,  just 
as  every  poet,  artist  or  prophet  feels  that  he  has  a  call.1 
But  though  Israel  may  have  been  a  chosen  people,  Jehovah 
was  not  a  Hebrew  patriot.  He  was  much  more  what  would 
nowadays  be  called  a  "pro-Roman."  And  to  think  of  Him 
as  a  Prussian  patriot  is  precisely  the  Kaiser's  blasphemy. 
The  Old  Testament  does  indeed  show  similar  backslidings 

British  sea-dog,  who  being  pursued  by  a  Dutch  frigate,  felt  sure  that  the 
wind  would  change  in  his  favor,  for,  said  he,  "God  will  never  desert  a  fellow- 
countryman."  And  a  perversely  beautiful  poem  in  the  Times  (March  22, 
1916)  called  To  the  Fainthearted  ended  with  the  lines: 

"  Slay  on,  that  so  our  brother  be 

Not  dead,  but  living  to  the  Lord." 

1  According  to  Clement  of  Alexandria  the  "Called"  (/cXi/roJ)  are  really 
only  those  who  choose  to  obey. 


134  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

into  tribalism,  but  this  is  just  what  the  Hebrew  prophets 
were  always  fighting  against.  The  Germans  must  rejoice, 
Pastor  Laible  declared  at  Leipzig,  when  submarines  drown 
the  " non-elect."  "How  can  ye  rejoice?"  God  asks  Israel 
in  the  Talmudical  legend  that  rebukes  the  song  of  Miriam 
over  the  drowning  of  the  Egyptians  in  the  Red  Sea.  "How 
can  ye  sing  when  my  children  are  perishing?"  There 
speaks  the  Jewish  God.  But  the  German  God  is  not  a  God 
at  all.  He  is  only  a  German.1 

1  "In  August  and  September:  Thou  hast  vouchsafed  us  Hohenzollern 
weather.  Thou  hast  helped  agriculture  by  the  high  prices  which  it  has  been 
able  to  get  for  its  horses  from  the  Army  authorities,,  etc.,  etc." — PASTOR 
POSSNER'S  Harvest  Sermon. 


MILITARISM,  BRITISH  AND  PRUSSIAN 

"lonon  credo  diceva;  lazanzara  .  .  .  che  ti  cosa  al  monda  viva,  la 
quale  pia  piu  utile  e  ad  au  tempo  piu  nobile  di  me." — CASPAR  Gozzi. 

"The  pillar  on  which  the  Empire  rests  is  the  Army." — THE  KAISER. 

Since  Swift  published  his  tract  on  The  Conduct  of  the 
Allies  in  1711,  no  such  patriotic  pamphleteering  has  been 
done  in  England  as  by  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw  in  his  Common 
Sense  about  the  War.  It  is  all  the  more  regrettable,  therefore, 
that  he  should  weaken  his  case  and  ours  by  blurring  over 
the  common-sense  distinction  between  British  militarism 
and  Prussian — the  one  subconscious  and  defensive,  the 
other  overconscious  and  aggressive.  The  Junker,  he  tells 
us,  is  merely  (in  the  dictionary)  "a  country  gentleman," 
and  since  England  indubitably  possesses  country  gentle- 
men, she  is  as  cursed  with  Junkers  as  Prussia.  On  the  same 
principle,  Taube  means  "a  dove,"  and  since  there  are  doves 
in  my  garden,  there  are  also  death-dealing  aeroplanes — and 
of  the  precise  Prussian  pattern.  The  plain  fact  is,  that  since 
the  young  Pomeranian  squire,  Bismarck,  fought  his  twenty- 
seven  duels,  the  Prussian  "country  gentleman"  in  the 
course  of  caricaturing  that  man  of  genius  has  developed  so 
odious  a  type  of  militarism  that  the  German  name  for  his 
class  stinks  in  the  nostrils  of  civilization.  Mr.  Shaw  begins, 
indeed,  by  allotting  separate  categories  to  the  Junker  and 
the  militarist,  but  practically  runs  the  two  as  synonymous. 
The  sober  and  ornithophilous  Sir  Edward  Grey  and  the 
dramatic  and  drill-demented  Kaiser  are  pilloried  as  a  pair. 

Mr.  Shaw's  pretext  for  beclouding  a  distinction,  which  is 

135 


136  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

as  clear  to  his  uncommon  as  to  my  common  sense,  is  that 
in  practice  British  militarism  and  Prussian  work  out  much 
the  same.  But  then,  they  are  not  always  in  practice,  and 
it  is  not  for  a  writer  to  put  together  what  a  merciful  heaven 
has  put  asunder.  There  are  the  times  of  peace,  and  in  these 
lucid  intervals  we  in  England  have  peace  from  the  soldier. 
His  swagger  is  limited  to  the  parks,  his  fascination  for  the 
female  sex  to  the  nymphs  of  the  perambulator.  When 
Kipling  wrote  his  ballad  of  Tommy  Atkins  to  correct  our  na- 
tional coldness  toward  our  defenders,  the  soldier's  uniform, 
instead  of  striking  awe,  was  a  badge  of  exclusion  from  the 
theatre  and  other  respectable  resorts.  In  Germany  the 
lieutenant  is  the  unquestioned  Adonis  even  of  the  drawing- 
room,  the  prostration  of  the  civilian  is  a  by-word.  During 
the  Boer  War  we  had  an  eruption  of  generals'  photographs, 
almost  ousting  the  actor  from  the  shop-windows.  But  the 
moment  the  war  ended,  the  actor  resumed  the  centre  of  the 
stage. 

Nor  is  it  only  the  Prussian  Army  that  is  military.  The 
same  mechanical  brutality  has  infected  every  department  of 
the  State,  and  I  have  already  related  how  as  the  President  of 
an  emigration  bureau  with  ramifications  in  Germany,  I 
have  wrestled  in  vain  against  the  barbarity  of  railway- 
porters,  sailors,  and  frontier-officials. 

Professor  von  Mach,  of  Harvard,  makes  fun  of  the  claim 
that  we  are  fighting  to  put  down  militarism,  since  England, 
he  alleges,  spends  sixty  per  cent  per  capita  more  for  arma- 
ments than  Germany.  This  is  a  familiar  ignoratio  elenchi, 
or  missing  of  the  point.  As  if  the  veriest  Quaker  would 
not  get  a  watch-dog  when  burglars  were  about !  It  is  not  the 
size  of  the  watch-dog,  but  the  worship  of  the  watch-dog, 
that  makes  militarism.  Britain,  with  possessions  scattered 
all  over  the  world,  must  necessarily  have  more  watch-dogs 
than  Germany.  Gilbert  has  observed  of  the  British  burglar 


MILITARISM,   BRITISH  AND  PRUSSIAN  137 

that  when  he  is  not  a-burgling  "he  loves  to  lie  a-basking  in 
the  sun."  But  the  German  burglar  never  basks.  He  reads 
Bernhardi  on  burgling,  attends  scientific  courses  on  crib- 
cracking,  proves  philosophically  that  larceny  is  the  law  of 
the  universe,  and  sings  Alsatia  ueber  Alles.  Why,  Professor 
von  Mach  need  only  consult  our  marching-songs  to  see 
with  what  gay  aloofness  the  Briton  marches  to  war.  From 
Armageddon  it  is  a  long,  long  way  to  Tipperary;  yet  Tip- 
perary  is  only  typical  of  all  our  marching-songs.  In  a  list 
of  nearly  eighty,  traditionally  attached  to  different  regi- 
ments, Rule,  Britannia  occurs  only  once,  and  the  majority 
of  our  warriors  advance  on  the  enemy  to  the  irrelevant 
strains  of  Come,  Lasses  and  Lads,  The  Lincolnshire  Poacher, 
and  such-like  rustic  melodies.  The  self-conscious  anti- 
German  war  songs  provided  by  a  Times  correspondent 
fell  still-born.  Rule,  Britannia  itself  dates  only  from  1 740, 
occurring  in  a  Masque  of  Alfred  by  a  poet,  whose  real 
achievement  was  his  rustic  description  of  The  Seasons, 
and  whose  most  famous  line,  "To  teach  the  young  idea  how 
to  shoot,"  has  nothing  to  do  with  rifles.1  And  even  Rule, 
Britannia  is  more  concerned  that  sea-power  shall  save  the 
islanders  from  enslavement  than  that  they  shall  build  up 
an  Empire  by  it.  It  was  not  till  1689  that  Parliament 
consented  to  legalize  a  standing  army  at  all,  and  to  this  day 
the  Army  created  by  the  Bill  of  Rights  has — like  the  meas- 
ure of  autonomy  conceded  to  it  in  1881 — to  be  re-legalized 
annually  in  the  House  of  Commons.  If  that  is  not  a  suffi- 
cient refutation  of  the  Harvard  Professor,  let  it  be  recalled 
that  while  the  Prussian  principle  of  universal  conscription 
has  been  adopted  all  over  the  Continent,  not  even  the 
impassioned  crusade  of  the  veteran  Lord  Roberts,  foretell- 
ing the  war,  could  woo  England  to  even  the  semblance  of 

1  It  seems  to  have  been  taken  too  literally  by  poor  Pearse,  the  school- 
master-President of  the  Irish  Republic. 


138  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

conscription.  The  political  genius  of  England  has  always 
understood  that  civilization  is — as  its  name  implies — an 
affair  of  civilians,  and  hence  even  the  War  Office  must  be 
run  by  a  civilian!  If  it  is  now  run  by  Lord  Kitchener,  that 
is  the  exception  which  proves  not  only  the  rule  but  the 
utter  unpreparedness  of  England.  At  the  greatest  crisis  in 
her  history  Mr.  Asquith  was  doubling  the  parts  of  Prime 
Minister  and  War  Minister,  and  our  two  greatest  naval 
experts — Lord  Fisher  and  Sir  Percy  Scott — were  lying  on 
the  shelf  as  too  old  for  the  burdens  of  peace!  And,  despite 
the  crisis,  and  even  despite  the  temporary  triumph  of  con- 
scription, Lord  Kitchener  is  far  from  being  a  military 
dictator.  Even  the  militarist  Times  resents  the  efforts  of 
the  Ministry  to  take  shelter  under  his  name  and  points  out 
sternly  that  the  responsibility  of  the  Cabinet  remains  one 
and  indivisible. 

And  while  the  Prussian  officer  is  saturated  with  the 
Treitschke  philosophy  of  force,  and  while,  as  Heine  so 
wonderfully  prophesied  in  1834,  the  ideas  of  the  German 
philosophers  find  issue  in  Berserker  blood-rages  that  stagger 
Christian  humanity,  the  British  officer  is  an  amiable 
Christian  gentleman,  only  too  occupied  with  Jerusalem 
and  the  mysteries  of  the  Beast.  Who  can  imagine  a  German 
General  Gordon?  A  British  Bernhardi  is  equally  incon- 
ceivable. Kitchener  himself  spent  five  years  in  the  Pales- 
tine Survey,  and  excavations  for  trenches  probably  interest 
him  less  than  excavations  for  holy  archaeology.  Even  that 
grim  sea-dog  Lord  Fisher  would  not  subscribe  to  the  creed 
of  Bernhardi,  though  he  might  practice  it.  As  the  peacock's 
tail  achieves  its  splendors  without  pigment,  so  Britain  has 
achieved  her  Empire  without  imperialism.  Absent- 
mindedly  she  has  acquired  a  fifth  of  the  globe,  blundering, 
as  Joseph  Chamberlain  pointed  out,  into  some  of  the  best 
parts  of  the  earth,  and  impeaching  her  Empire-builders  as 


MILITARISM,   BRITISH  AND   PRUSSIAN  139 

often  as  she  has  rewarded  them.  Clive,  Warren  Hastings, 
Rhodes,  were  all  censured  in  the  House  of  Commons.  It 
took  an  outsider,  Disraeli,  even  to  discover  the  Empire, 
and  all  Chamberlain's  exhortations  to  think  imperially 
broke  themselves  against  an  invincible  insularity.  Only 
yesterday  a  powerful  section  panted  to  cut  away  our  col- 
onies, those  colonies  for  which  Germany  would  bathe  the 
world  in  blood.  It  may  be  urged  that  subconsciousness  so 
deep  amounts  to  stupidity.  But  I  prefer  brainless  Britain 
to  godless  Germany. 

This  is  not  to  deny  that  Britain  possesses  a  conscious 
militarist  minority — especially  in  the  shape  of  poets  phys- 
ically disqualified,  like  the  lame  schoolmaster  Tyrtaeus, 
from  military  service.  But  the  Machiavellian  Foreign 
Policy  imagined  by  the  Continent  is  a  myth.  It  was  not 
even  continuous  till  Hardinge  came  to  the  Foreign  Office 
to  carry  out  the  Edwardian  plan  of  isolating  Germany,  and 
this  policy  was  merely  defensive  and  apprehensive.  It  is 
Germany  that  has  refused  Mr.  Churchill's  reiterated  over- 
tures to  reduce  armaments.  Her  responsibility  for  the 
present  war  is  as  clear  to  everybody — except  Mr.  Shaw — 
as  her  surprise  at  England's  taking  a  hand  in  it.  Irritated 
by  the  attempt  to  paint  Germany  as  a  wolf  and  England 
as  a  lamb,  Mr.  Shaw  paints  England  as  a  lion,  with  Ger- 
many, apparently,  as  the  lamb.  In  truth  England  is  a 
gorged  lion  and  Germany  a  hungry  wolf.  The  one  wants 
repose,  the  other  blood.  Subconsciously  as  John  Bull 
acquired  his  Empire,  he  is  morbidly  conscious  of  any  at- 
tempt to  rob  him  of  a  single  sterile,  square  inch,  and  like 
the  old  squire  whose  ancestors  have  annexed  common  land, 
he  regards  any  examination  of  his  title-deeds  as  blasphe- 
mous. The  Prussian  Junker  appears  to  him  as  a  land- 
grabbing  parvenu.  But  it  must  be  admitted  that  the  satis- 
faction of  his  tenantry — their  readiness  to  die  for  him — is 


140  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

almost  a  retrospective  justification  for  his  proprietorial 
paternalism.  That  Germany  might  well  be  conceded  some 
of  his  uninhabited  land  is  a  proposition  the  Daily  Chronicle 
allowed  me  to  make  in  London  in  1913,  and  the  Neue  Freie 
Presse  in  Vienna.  But  the  Berliner  Tageblatt  would  not 
print  it  because  of  the  corollary  that  Germany  in  her  turn 
must  give  back  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  If  force  is  thus 
nakedly  proclaimed  as  the  sole  arbiter — if  the  Germans  en- 
dorse Herr  Harden's  dithyrambs  on  "the  will  to  power" — 
then  no  theoretical  justification,  no  Titanic  grandeurs  of 
effort  or  sacrifice,  can  cleanse  Germany  from  the  guilt  of 
high  treason  against  mankind.  For  Germany  can  catch  up 
with  Britain  only  by  rolling  back  the  planet.  And  that 
involves  rolling  it  back  to  a  barbarism  that  combines  the 
era  of  the  cave-men  with  the  latest  devilries  of  science. 
Vain  for  Germany  to  cry  that  it  is  Russia  which  is  the 
enemy  of  civilization.  The  Cossack  is  only  a  wild  beast, 
the  German  is  a  wilful  beast.  The  Briton  is  a  beast 
neither  by  nature  nor  by  design. 


ARMS  AND  THE  BAND 

[Speech  at  the  Mansion  House,  January  27th,  1915.] 

"  Beat!  beat!  drums!    Blow!  bugles!  blow! 
Make  no  parley — stop  for  no  expostulation." 

WALT  WHITMAN. 

I  feel  it  a  peculiar  privilege  to  be  allowed  to  speak  this 
afternoon  in  support  of  Mr.  Kipling's  resolution  on  behalf 
of  so  national  a  cause,  inasmuch  as  we  literary  men  stand 
at  this  moment — unless  we  are  young  enough  to  stand  in 
the  trenches — in  a  somewhat  humiliating  position.  As  I 
have  complained  before,  it's  a  long,  long  way  to  literary. 
Indeed  a  friend  of  mine  who  does  stand  in  the  trenches 
tells  me  that  literary  men  should  be  absolutely  silent  un- 
less they  can  say  something  that  will  contribute  to  our 
country's  victory.  Without  altogether  agreeing  with  him, 
I  am  yet  sure  he  would  permit  me  to  break  silence  this 
afternoon,  for  it  is  certain  that  the  movement  for  which  I 
have  the  honor  to  plead,  and  which  I  feel  sure  you  will 
help  to  create,  will  contribute  in  no  small  measure  to  our 
country's  victory.  Patriotism  makes  us  acquainted  with 
strange  platform-fellows,  but  I  do  not  think  that  Lord  Den- 
man  who  has  just  spoken  should  have  utilized  this  oppor- 
tunity to  preach  conscription.  Since  he  has  done  so,  I 
must  also  go  outside  our  theme  proper  and  say  a  word  for 
those  who  like  myself,  oppose  conscription,  not  because 
it  is  not  the  duty  of  every  citizen  to  serve  his  country,  but 
because  under  the  present  military  system  he  loses  all  his 
civil  rights.  The  bullying  in  consequence  in  the  Prussian 
Army  is  a  byword.  But  even  in  England  soldiers  have  the 

141 


142  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

same  feeling  that  the  army  is  above  the  law.  Even  the  late 
revered  Lord  Roberts  when  called  before  a  civil  tribunal  in 
some  case  involving  the  army  disdainfully  refused  to  give  evi- 
dence. But  the  cause  we  are  pleading  this  afternoon  is  in- 
dependent of  the  vexed  question  imported  by  Lord  Denman. 

There  was  a  king  who  once  offered  a  reward  to  anybody 
who  would  invent  a  new  pleasure.  One  would  have  thought, 
such  is  the  multiplicity  of  appeals  to-day  in  connection 
with  the  war,  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  invent  a  new 
need.  And  yet  our  appeal  for  martial  music  is  so  obvious, 
so  simple,  that  the  only  wonder  is  how  it  escaped  being 
invented  at  the  very  start  of  the  war.  But  then  we  had 
so  much  to  think  of — so  much  indeed,  that  the  only  consola- 
tion I  can  find  in  our  utter  unpreparedness  for  war  is  the 
proof  it  affords  that  at  least  we  did  not  plan  this  war,  and 
that  the  responsibility  for  this  monstrous  blood-guilt  does 
not  rest  upon  the  soul  of  Britain.  A  measure  of  responsi- 
bility will  rest  upon  us,  however,  if,  by  neglecting  to  bring 
to  bear  every  force  at  our  disposal,  we  delay,  even  by  a 
day,  the  end  of  the  war.  And  for  quickening  the  pace  of 
progress  and  precipitating  the  march  of  victory,  there  is 
no  fresh  power  that  we  can  call  to  our  aid  so  potent  as  the 
power  of  music. 

Music  is  an  ally  worth  at  least  another  Balkan  State. 
Music  to  an  army  or  a  nation  in  war  time  is  not  a  luxury; 
it  is  a  necessity.  It  is  not  something  that  can  come  after 
gum  boots  or  waterproof  overcoats;  it  is  something  that 
in  a  crisis  may  be  more  efficacious  than  either.  As  Shake- 
speare says: 

"  A  merry  heart  goes  all  the  way, 
Your  sad  tires  in  a  mile-a." 

Music  hath  charms  not  only  to  soothe  the  savage  breast, 
but  to  lift  the  tired  foot. 


ARMS  AND   THE  BAND  143 

But  no  less  important  than  its  effect  on  the  recruiting 
and  on  the  route  marches  is  its  effect  on  the  outside  public. 
The  Times  told  us  recently  of  a  French  cartoon  in  which 
two  soldiers  are  seen  under  shell  fire  in  the  trenches,  as 
stout-hearted  as  they  are  mud-stained,  but  wistfully  re- 
marking, "If  only  the  civilians  will  hold  out!"  There  is, 
you  see,  a  reciprocal  relation  of  mutual  support  between 
the  soldiers  at  the  front  and  the  civilians  behind  them,  and 
one  reacts  on  the  other.  Indeed,  M.  Delcasse  has  given 
the  name  of  "internal  defence"  to  those  measures  which 
are  necessary  to  keep  up  the  moral  of  the  nation.  And 
for  keeping  up  a  nation's  moral  it  is  necessary  to  call  in  the 
Muses — the  spirits  of  poetry  and  song. 

One  often  sees  quoted  the  sentiment  of  the  utilitarian 
philosopher  Bentham  that  the  game  of  push-pin  is  more 
useful  than  poetry.  Well,  we  have  forgotten  what  the  game 
of  push-pin  is,  but  the  poetry  of  Bentham's  contemporary, 
Wordsworth,  was  found  useful  in  the  Times  only  the  other 
day  to  hearten  us  up  with  the  sense  of  the  greatness  of  our 
country.  So  I  imagine,  too,  that  the  poetry  of  Mr.  Rudyard 
Kipling  may  outlast  even  the  game  of  golf.  This  useless 
thing — poetry — this  apparent  literary  luxury  has  become, 
you  see,  a  daily  necessity  of  the  newspaper.  Just  as  above 
a  certain  temperature  water  turns  to  steam,  so  at  a  certain 
point  of  national  exaltation  the  prosaic  newspaper  article 
must  needs  give  place  to  rhyme  and  metre.  Man  cannot 
live  by  bread  alone;  the  soul  in  these  high  moments  demands 
nutrition.  And  so,  too,  the  national  spirit  at  this  supreme 
crisis  demands  to  be  uplifted  by  the  ubiquitous  strains 
of  martial  music. 

I  remember  drawing  attention,  some  twenty  years  ago, 
to  the  importance  of  music  even  in  the  more  humdrum 
affairs  of  civil  life.  If  our  sense  of  citizenship  too  often 
fails,  may  it  not  be,  I  asked,  because  too  little  appeal  is 


144  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

made  to  our  sense  of  poetry  and  color.  Our  Lord  Mayors 
thrill  the  imagination  with  their  robes  and  gilded  state, 
and  there  is  never  any  lack  of  civic  pride  and  consciousness 
among  aldermen,  or  even  the  Mansion  House  footmen. 
But  for  the  bulk  of  citizens  there  is  nothing  to  remind  them 
that  they  are  citizens  of  no  mean  city.  In  the  pictures  of 
mediaeval  processions  you  will  see  that  each  art  and  craft 
had  its  costume  of  honor,  even  the  butcher,  the  baker,  and 
the  candlestick  maker.  In  Sicily  to  this  day  the  very  dust- 
cart is  glorified  by  gay  paintings  all  around  it.  I  trace  the 
reluctance  to  pay  taxes  to  the  absence  of  any  dramatic 
appeal  to  our  sense  of  citizenship  and  any  reminder  of  the 
national  uses  to  which  these  taxes  are  put.  If  the  tax- 
collector,  instead  of  coming  in  the  shape  of  a  gray  piece 
of  paper,  came  at  the  head  of  a  band  playing  national  airs, 
we  should  have  a  much  truer  sense  of  what  taxes  mean, 
and  we  should  pay  them  far  more  cheerfully.  The  proverb 
talks  of  paying  the  piper,  but  where  is  the  piper  to  pay? 
How  gladly  would  we  pay  tribute  to  his  skirling  tunes  and 
fluttering  tartans!  But  we  can  only  pay  the  paper,  and  it 
is  a  drab  and  joyless  thing  to  do. 

In  this  fading  out  of  life  and  color  from  our  national 
life,  only  the  soldier  retained  his  brave  apparel  and  his  joy 
of  music,  and  I  pleaded,  therefore,  that  for  the  better  under- 
standing and  for  the  better  proportioning  of  national  values 
something  of  this  military  gaiety  should  be  infused  into 
civil  life.  Alas!  what  do  we  find  to-day?  Why,  even  mili- 
tary life  has  lost  its  gaiety — it  has  been  infused  with  our 
civil  dulness.  Lately  there  was  revived  in  London  a  play 
two  centuries  old — "The  Recruiting  Sergeant"  of  Farquhar, 
and  to  me  the  only  stirring  moment  of  this  dreary  old 
classic  was  when  the  recruiting  band  marched  along  with 
its  fifes  and  kettle-drums.  I  longed  to  jump  on  the  stage 
and  to  fight  for  Queen  Anne — though  I  understand  that 


ARMS   AND    THE    BAND  145 

she  is  dead.  To-day,  confronted  by  an  infinitely  greater 
crisis  than  Queen  Anne's  England  had  to  face,  we  go  about 
our  recruiting  in  solemn  silence.  It  is  the  more  depressing 
because  of  the  darkness  of  our  streets  at  night.  Berlin  is 
blazing  with  light.  The  Germans  have  doubled  their 
normal  standard — they  have  the  two-power  standard  in 
lamps  if  not  in  ships.  No  doubt  it  is  not  the  light  of  truth. 
Still  less  is  it  sweetness  and  light.  But  it  does  keep  up  the 
spirits  of  the  Germans.  Now,  I  do  not  complain  about  our 
darkness,  especially  if  it  is  a  military  necessity.  I  should 
even  approve  of  it  were  it  only  a  fine  piece  of  symbolism. 
It  is  right  that  we  should  be  so  constantly  reminded  of  our 
heroes  agonizing  in  alien  trenches — it  is  fitting  that  we 
in  our  comfortable  homes  should  have  hanging  over  our 
land  this  shadow  of  the  wings  of  the  Angel  of  Death.  This 
is  a  blackness  which  can,  and  should  be,  felt.  It  is  a  dark- 
ness which  says — "lest  we  forget!"  But  if  we  thus  share, 
however  faintly  and  symbolically,  the  gloom  and  darkness 
of  the  battlefield,  so  have  we  a  right  to  share  its  ardors  and 
its  ecstasies. 

The  blind  man  said  that  scarlet  was  like  the  sound  of  the 
trumpet.  Like  the  sound  of  the  trumpet,  too,  is  that 
heroic  uplift  of  the  civilian's  soul  as  he  offers  himself  for 
his  country,  and  we  demand  to  be  reminded  of  this  likewise 
in  our  daily  comings  and  goings,  to  feel  not  only  the  bodily 
miseries  of  our  soldiers  translated  into  darkness,  but  also 
their  spiritual  exaltations  translated  into  music.  Music 
helps  us  to  remember  that  war  with  all  its  inevitable  evil 
and  ugliness  has  also  its  soul  of  nobleness  and  beauty,  and 
that  this  war  in  particular  is  the  war  of  the  spirit  against 
the  spirit  of  war. 

But  though  it  is  wrong  that  we  should  have  been  left  so 
long  without  this  symbolism  and  this  inspiriting  of  music, 
I  cannot  regret  it  when  I  think  what  a  wonderful  wealth  of 


146  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

heroic  service  we  have  tapped — without  a  single  tap  of  the 
drum.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  war-music  is  a  mere 
intoxication  to  lure  off  the  thoughtless.  It  is  said  that  the 
gay  clothes  of  the  soldiers  are  equally  alluring,  especially  to 
females.  Well,  we  have  seen  tens  of  thousands  of  young 
men  throwing  over  their  careers,  enlisting  and  marching 
in  silence  at  the  mere  plain  call  of  duty,  drilling  in  the 
wintry  streets  without  even  the  mitigated  gaiety  of  khaki 
to  stimulate  them.  It  is  a  spectacle  that  will  ever  be  re- 
membered among  the  noblest  episodes  in  English  history. 
But  now  that  England  has  stood  this  supreme  test  of  her 
moral  fibre,  there  is  no  need  to  prolong  it.  Let  the  streets 
of  London  now  resound  to  the  music  it  has  so  nobly  deserved, 
let  the  music  kindle  the  ardor  of  sacrifice  in  those  who  have 
till  now  held  back,  and  let  it  accompany  and  quicken  our 
march  to  victory. 


THE  MODEL  MONSTER 

"The  State  is  called  the  coldest  of  all  cold  monsters."— NIETZSCHE 
on  The  New  Idol. 


Two  friends  of  mine — famous  dramatists  both — went  to 
Germany  together  some  months  before  the  war  and  came 
back  ecstatic  over  the  tidy  towns,  the  absence  of  poverty, 
the  spacious  workshops  with  their  insurance  and  pension 
systems,  the  artistic  railway  stations,  the  high  level  of 
technical  and  general  education  and  of  literary  and  es- 
pecially musical  taste, — that  gave  our  own  composers  their 
first  hearing — and  the  general  sense  of  organization  and 
efficiency,  and  they  declared  with  a  unanimity  rare  in 
two  men  of  letters  that  our  slipshod  English  ways  must  be 
instantly  replaced  by  a  paternal  protectionism.  Now  no- 
body is  more  painfully  aware  than  I  of  our  British  defi- 
ciencies and  the  ludicrousness  of  London  as  a  literary  or 
musical  capital;  and  I  have  long  considered  that  the  most 
ironic  spectacle  in  the  world  is  our  semi-sober,  semi-unem- 
ployed street-lounger  as  the  representative  of  an  imperial 
race  holding  one-fifth  of  the  globe,  and  ruling  one-fourth 
of  living  humanity.  What's  Empire  to  him  or  he  to  Em- 
pire? Nevertheless  my  friends'  raptures  struck  but  a 
faint  responsive  chord  in  my  incorrigibly  Victorian  breast. 

"Wanting  is — what? 
Duty  redundant, 
Beauty  abundant, 
Where  is  the  blot?" 

147 


148  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

II 

I  remember — before  the  war — going  one  sultry  August 
day  into  the  princely  offices  of  a  Jewish  financier  of  German 
origin,  and  finding  him — to  my  surprise — enthroned  as 
usual  before  his  table,  with  cables  and  telegrams  coming 
in  six-deep  and  tape-machines  ticking  out  their  implacable 
information.  I  must  have  expressed  my  astonishment  at 
finding  him  at  work  when  almost  everybody  else  was  at 
play,  perhaps  surmised  it  was  the  secret  of  his  success,  for 
I  recall  that,  being  in  one  of  his  genial  moods,  the  great 
financier  went  on  to  trace  Anti-Semitism  to  the  resent- 
ment felt  for  efficiency.  The  Christian  banker,  he  said, 
expected  to  come  down  to  his  office  at  eleven  and  to  leave 
at  four,  to  have  a  long  week-end  and  to  hunt  twice  a  week 
in  the  season;  and  then  when  he  saw  he  was  losing  business, 
resentment  against  his  successful  rivals  began  to  rankle. 
I  could  not  escape  a  sneaking  sympathy  with  poor  John 
Bull  thus  disconcerted  in  his  debonair  way  of  living.  I 
am  perfectly  aware  that  the  efficiency  of  its  bankers  makes 
for  the  prosperity  of  the  Empire,  and,  in  these  times  of 
attrition,  for  its  safety  even,  and  if  a  safe  prosperity  is  the 
test  of  greatness  then  the  Jewish  financier  was  more  pa- 
triotic than  his  easy-going  rivals.  But  is  the  game  worth 
the  candle?  Is  not  the  Jewish  ideal  of  a  leisurely  study 
of  holy  lore  a  more  desirable  way  of  life? 

Another  acquaintance  of  mine,  a  professor  of  chemistry 
at  a  great  provincial  university,  announced  a  lecture  (dur- 
ing the  war)  on  "How  to  capture  the  German  dye- trade !" 
Charlie  Chaplin  himself  could  not  have  drawn  a  more 
numerous  or  eager  audience.  "First  of  all,"  he  began, 
and  every  ear  was  pricked  up,  and  every  eye  glistened, 
"No  week-ends!"  The  faces  fell.  A  dim  presentiment 
that  German  trade  was  capturing  them  chilled  the  ardent 


THE   MODEL  MONSTER  149 

assembly.  In  point  of  fact,  what  did  it  mean,  that  Ger- 
many was  "dumping"  goods  on  England?  That  in  her 
cousinly  devotion  to  the  interests  of  our  masses  she  was 
toiling  day  and  night  to  supply  them  with  commodities 
as  cheaply  as  possible.  Poor  patient,  drudging  Teuton! 
Pitiful  helot,  bearing  our  British  burdens!  We  did  not 
want  to  be  a  nest  of  ants  with  a  slave-colony.  But  if 
Germans  ever,  ever,  ever,  will  be  slaves  what  is  to  be  done? 

Ill 

It  is  because  Germany  has  thus  speeded  up  everything, 
that  her  commercialism  is  as  much  a  menace  to  the  human 
race  as  her  militarism.  True,  she  only  copied  British  in- 
dustrialism, but  by  surpassing  her  model  she  made  it  still 
uglier.  Aristotle  rightly  places  virtue  in  the  mean,  but  the 
Germans  seem  to  have  borrowed  from  Oscar  Wilde,  one 
of  their  favorite  philosophers,  the  maxim  that  nothing 
succeeds  like  excess.  My  mind  goes  back  wistfully — demo- 
crat though  I  am — to  those  sleepy  old  Courts  that  Napoleon 
crashed  into  and  Bismarck  absorbed,  to  those  petty  prin- 
cipalities and  Grand  Duchies  so  delightfully  described  by 
Heine,  where  the  little  peoples  slumbered  at  the  feet  of 
their  princes,  waking  up  to  say  "Guten  M or  gen,  Vater" 
whereat  the  princes  answered:  "Guten  M  or  gen,  meine 
Kinder.11  It  was  not  only  the  Princes  who  were  not  "ge- 
plagten"  in  those  days.  The  terrible  grind  of  modern  life 
began  only,  when  giant  machines  arose  to  take  captive 
and  enslave  the  little  breed  of  man,  s.o  that  their  uncanny 
passion  for  warmth  and  whirling  might  be  gratified  without 
stint.  It  is  not  so  much  the  long  hours  that  are  to  be 
execrated — nobody  works  longer  hours  than  myself — as 
the  monotony  of  the  labor  to  which  these  iron  masters 
constrain  them.  One  might  even  condone  the  monotony 


150  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

if  the  products  were  satisfactorily  divided.  But  the  poor 
remain  poor  and  life  becomes  ugly  even  for  the  rich.  Dtis- 
seldorf,  the  birthplace  of  Heine,  from  his  description  of 
which  I  have  just  been  quoting,  once  celebrated  for  its 
school  of  art,  and  boasting  of  scholars  and  philosophers, 
is  now  famous  for  its  iron  factories  and  its  manufactures 
of  explosives — a  literal  conversion  to  blood  and  iron.1 

IV 

The  cry  to  " organize/'  the  slogan  of  "Efficiency"  comes 
from  every  quarter  of  the  horizon — we  are  ignorant  and 
self-satisfied,  says  Sir  Oliver  Lodge,  our  governing  classes, 
all  classes.  Our  commercial  men  have  neglected  the  ex- 
pert, says  the  Royal  Society,  and  the  War  Office  has  neg- 
lected him  even  more  fatally.  The  Empire  is  disorganized, 
disgraced  by  preventable  poverty,  says  Mr.  Hughes,  the 
man  from  Australia.  We  need  to  borrow  "the  national 
self-discipline  which  lies  behind  the  German  Armies,"  says 
the  Archbishop  of  York.  It  is  all  true — nostra  culpa — 
abominably  true ;  Lord  Rosebery  preached  it  long  ago,  even 
before  Germany  had  in  every  sense  shocked  the  four  corners 
of  the  world  in  arms.  Admiration  for  her  (as  Sir  Max 
Wachter  pointed  out  in  the  Fortnightly  Review  for  May, 
1913)  "was  clearly  apparent  in  Great  Britain's  desire  to 
shape  its  administration,  its  education  and  its  social  legisla- 
tion on  Germany's  model."  No  wonder  "Efficiency"  now 
meets  us  everywhere  like  a  patent  medicine,  and  "Organi- 
zation" is  replacing  "Mesopotamia"  as  a  blessed  word. 

Nevertheless  I  continue  to  hold  that  we  must  fly  from 

1  The  reason  Germans  are  disliked,  according  to  Naumann,  the  author  of 
Mittel-Europa,  is  because  their  State  has  arrived  at  the  "second  step"  of 
transition  from  private  Capitalism  to  Socialism  in  the  sense  of  "a  national 
order  for  the  raising  of  the  common  produce  of  all  for  the  use  of  all." 


THE  MODEL  MONSTER  151 

Germany's  Efficiency  and  Organization  as  Mr.  Poultney 
Bigelow  tells  us  the  cinnamon-colored  children  of  her 
colonies  fly  from  German  education,  shinning  up  the  tallest 
trees.  God  would  indeed  " strafe"  England  if  this  is  to  be 
the  outcome  of  our  gigantic  struggle  for  liberty;  if  we  are 
to  accept  the  ideal  of  making  ourselves  efficient  fighting 
cocks — whether  the  fight  be  military  or  commercial — or 
of  turning  our  State  into  that  perfectly- working  Diesel 
machine  which  Mr.  Lloyd  George  so  magnificently  de- 
nounced at  the  beginning  of  the  war.  To  any  true  civiliza- 
tion, Prussianism  is  as  deadly  as  prussic  acid.  Abolish 
Greek  in  our  universities  if  you  will ;  nay,  replace  it  by  chem- 
istry. But  by  chemistry  as  an  intellectual  interest,  not 
as  an  aid  to  commercial  competition.  We  cannot  dispense 
with  Tityrus, 

"Patulce  recubans  sub  tegminefagi" 

even  if  he  is  meditating  the  chemistry  of  his  oaten  reed, 
instead  of  playing  upon  it.  Germany  is  full  of  skilled 
technical  experts  with  a  university  training.  And  they 
are  ground  down  to  the  wages  of  clerks.  In  short — first 
catch  your  hare.  Before  you  babble  of  "Organization'' 
and  "Efficiency"  see  that  you  have  a  civilization  worth 
organizing,  and  an  ideal  that  efficiency  will  not  make 
still  more  monstrous. 


Efficiency  is  but  a  means  to  an  end,  and  if  the  end  is 
unworthy,  organization  only  increases  the  evil.  Neither 
the  rigid  military  religionism  of  the  Junkers,  though  it  has 
its  beauty,  nor  the  scientific  industrialism  of  the  com- 
mercial classes,  though  it  has  its  necessity,  nor  the  national- 
ization of  education,  though  it  has  its  nobility,  is  improved 
by  the  extreme  to  which  it  is  pushed  by  a  people  of  inexor- 


152  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

able  and  therefore  imperfect  logic.  For  life  is  crushed  in 
these  iron  grooves.  That  which  other  peoples  have  held 
lightly  and  with  a  sense  of  the  simultaneous  pull  of  rival 
ideals  and  aspects  Germany  drives  to  a  one-sided  finality. 
As  her  philosophy  has  made  of  Darwinism  an  excuse  for 
militarism,  so  her  militarism  shrinks  from  no  brutality 
implicit  in  a  syllogism,  while  a  horde  of  poets  and  philoso- 
phers follow  in  the  wake  of  her  armies,  ready  to  find  a 
logical  niche  for  any  unforeseen  barbarity  and  to  cover  even 
an  accidental  atrocity  with  a  fine-sounding  theory. 

Other  peoples  find  military  operations  occasionally  neces- 
sary, but  Bismarck  must  declare  "War  is  the  natural  con- 
dition of  humanity,"  Moltke  must  make  it  a  religion,  Bern- 
hardi  a  biological  necessity,  and  Treitschke  a  philosophy  of 
history.  Other  peoples  find  it  necessary  to  rely  more  on 
manufactures  and  less  on  agriculture,  but  for  Germany  this 
must  be  a  Weltpolitik  necessitating  "places  in  the  Sun" — 
market-places,  ordinary  mortals  call  them.  Other  peoples 
find  it  necessary  to  have  ships,  but  "the  future  of  Germany 
is  on  the  water!"  These  poor  Teutons  can  think  only  in 
terms  of  the  State,  in  which  they  have  merged  their  docile 
souls. 

VI 

Now  every  country  is  already  sufficiently  Prussian  to  be 
only  saved  by  its  inefficiency.  Every  country  holds  in  solu- 
tion the  elements  that  could  be  precipitated  into  a  Prussia, 
mediaeval  religionism,  divine  right  of  Kings  (even  Republics 
have  always  Pretenders  latent),  fighting  services  and  tradi- 
tions and  illusions  of  the  glory  of  conquest,  grinding  fac- 
tories, lust  of  world-trade  and  of  new  Afric  markets,  etc. 
As  Burns  almost  wrote: — 

O  wad  some  power  gie  us,  brithers, 
To  see  ourselves  as  we  see  ithers. 


THE   MODEL  MONSTER  153 

Prussia  is  a  distorting  mirror  in  which  we  may  see  ourselves 
straightened  out — our  incoherence  distorted  into  systematic 
rigidity.  We  may  also  see  ourselves  upside  down,  for  Prussia 
stands  upon  its  apex — Junkerdom  and  the  Kaiser — instead 
of  being  "  broad-based  upon  the  people's  will."  The  vision 
should  be  enough  to  keep  us  right  side  up.  If  Englishmen 
do  not  think  at  all,  they  at  least  escape  the  bad  thinking  of 
the  Germans  which,  beginning  on  a  wrong  basis,  gets 
steadily  worse  the  more  logical  it  is.  With  an  illogical 
person  two  wrongs  may  always  make  a  right,  but  your 
German  never  blunders  back  into  sense.  If,  however,  Eng- 
land is  now  strung  up  to  thinking  point,  let  her  think  out  a 
better  social  order  for  organization  than  Prussia  possesses. 
The  real  trouble  with  Prussian  organization  is  not  that  it  is 
efficient  but  that  it  is  premature.  The  Englishman  may  be 
uneducated  but  the  German  is  highly  miseducated.  That 
is,  I  take  it,  the  answer  to  Sir  Leo  Chiozza  Money,  who 
could  not  understand  why  Mr.  Sidney  Webb's  socialist 
organ  The  New  Statesman  should  be  so  against  Prussia, 
and  conscription.  But  if  Prussia's  approach  to  State 
Socialism  leaves  even  the  Socialist  cold,  it  is  because  Bis- 
marck stole  Lassalle's  clothes  and  put  military  buttons  on 
them.  National  service  with  civil  rights  must  form  part 
of  any  rational  social  order,  but  when  conscription  came  on 
us  like  a  thief  in  the  night,  it  combined  the  immaturity  of 
Prussia  with  the  inefficiency  of  England.  Like  the  pessi- 
mist in  the  humorous  definition,  placed  between  two  evils, 
we  chose  both.  We  want  an  efficient  England,  not  an  effi- 
cient Prussia.  But  an  inefficient  Prussia  would  be  "pes- 
simism" indeed. 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR   GERMANY 

"He  takes  the  part  which  he  thinks  most  in  need  of  his  sup- 
port, not  so  much  out  of  magnanimity,  as  to  prevent  too  great  a 
degree  of  presumption  or  self-complacency  on  the  triumphant 
side." — HAZLITT. 


If  I  had  not  read  The  Fatherland  every  week  and  not  been 
deluged  with  abusive  letters  from  German-Americans,  I 
should  have  been  tempted  to  think  there  was  something  to 
be  said  for  Germany.  But  the  gross  vulgarity  and  exaggera- 
tion of  the  pro- Germans  of  America,  their  rancorous  mis- 
reading both  of  British  history  and  their  own  President, 
contract  the  sympathies.  I  feel  they  would  have  a  much 
better  case  if  they  would  consent  to  be  even  a  little  in  the 
wrong.  Just  as  I  feel  my  own  admirable  countrymen  would 
occupy  much  firmer  ground,  if  they  would  consent  to  tone 
down  their  saintliness  and  chivalry.  The  only  hero — or 
heroine — of  this  epic  is  Belgium.  She  is  the  only  figure 
sans  peur  et  sans  reproche.  There  was  nothing  heroic  in  our 
going  to  help  her.  True,  we  were  not  bound  to  help  her — 
our  guarantee  was  not  unconditional — but  if  "a  German 
Antwerp  is  a  pistol  pointed  straight  at  England"  Sancho 
Panza  himself  would  have  scarcely  refrained  from  the  ad- 
venture. Our  generosity  and  loving  kindness  to  her  refugees 
went  beyond  the  bounds  of  military  necessity — we  are 
entitled  to  plume  ourselves  on  that.  But  to  vaunt  our 
honor  in  the  business  would  be  like  bragging  of  our  honesty 
because  we  had  thwarted  a  shopkeeper's  attempt  to  give 

154 


SOME   APOLOGISTS   FOR   GERMANY  155 

us  short  change.  Nobody  now,  however — except  perhaps 
the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury — represents  us  as  fighting 
primarily  for  the  sanctity  of  treaties.  Even  Mr.  Garvin  now 
admits  that  Colonel  John  Ward,  M.  P.,  went  to  the  heart 
of  the  matter  when  he  cried  in  the  House:  " Surely  anyone 
can  see  that  the  battlefields  of  Flanders  and  France  are  as 
much  our  own  battlefields  as  though  the  battles  were  being 
fought  in  our  own  villages."  The  soldier  "  shrivelled  up 
sophistry"  Mr.  Garvin  tells  us.1  I  believe  it  is  Mr.  Shaw 
who  claims  to  have  shrivelled  it  up.  But  surely  it  was 
neither  he  nor  the  Colonel  but  that  plain-dealer  of  politics, 
Mr.  Bonar  Law,  who  by  offering  Mr.  Asquith  his  co-opera- 
tion even  before  Belgium  was  invaded,  and  by  saying  in 
the  House  immediately  after  she  was  invaded,  that  we  owed 
Belgium  a  debt  that  we  could  never  repay,  surely  it  was  he, 
who  put  the  war  on  its  true  basis  as  the  long-impending 
struggle  between  England  and  Germany.  It  has  indeed 
been  somewhat  disconcerting  to  all  of  us,  who  have  for  years 
been  thrilling  with  expectancy  of  this  Titanic  war  for  the 
world,  to  be  fobbed  off — when  it  did  come — with  talk  about 
assassinated  arch-dukes  or  violated  treaties.  In  so  elemental 
a  contest  for  hegemony  the  pretext  for  hostilities  is  of  only 
minor  relevance,  and  there  is  even  a  sense  in  which  neither 
side  can  be  classed  as  " right "  or  "wrong."  Kant  somewhat 
ironically  wonders  that  the  word  " right"  has  not  been 
openly  banished  from  politics  as  a  pedantry.  But  surely 
the  real  distinction  between  England  and  Germany  is  not 
that  one  is  "right"  and  the  other  "wrong"  but  that  one  is 
England  and  the  other  Germany  and  that  it  would  be  a 
sad  day  for  the  world  if  Germany  triumphed.  The  victory 
of  England  is  desirable — even  for  the  outside  world — not 
because  she  is  "right"  but  because  she  is  England,  because 
she  represents  a  freer  and  less  selfish  civilization.  She  may 
1  Observer,  January  4,  1916. 


156  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

be  no  better  than  Germany  in  her  lust  of  Empire,  but  once 
her  rule  is  accepted,  she  will  rule  with  justice,  with  sym- 
pathy, with  generosity,  and  without  crushing  her  subjects 
with  her  Kultur.  Had  Germany  possessed  the  naval  hegem- 
ony instead  of  England,  there  would  have  been  no  "free- 
dom of  the  seas"  even  in  peace,  but  vexatious  tariffs  and 
closed  areas.  Wordsworth  lamented  of  his  country, 

"  Oh,  grief  that  earth's  best  hopes  rest  all  with  thee!  " 

But  at  any  rate  they  are  earth's  best  hopes.  Placed  be- 
tween the  German  devil  and  the  deep  sea  Britannia  rules 
over,  no  sane  person  could  hesitate  to  commit  himself  to 
the  mercy  of  the  waves. 

Which  things  being  so,  even  Mr.  Shaw's  contention — in 
perhaps  his  finest  piece  of  English — that  the  old  British  lion 
seized  the  chance  of  making  a  spring  at  Germany  when  she 
had  foolishly  handicapped  herself  with  two  other  antag- 
onists, would  not  put  England  in  the  wrong.  She  was  merely 
following  the  maxim  of  Barney  Barnato — "if  you  see  an- 
other man  about  to  hit  you,  you  hit  him  first." 

II 

Still  less  sympathy  have  I  with  Mr.  Shaw's  pseudo- 
Prussian  logic  in  acceptance  of  her  "  f rightf ulness "  as  fair 
fighting,  his  professed  inability  to  see  why  civilians  who  pay 
for  the  war  should  not  suffer  by  it  as  much  as  combatants. 
No  form  of  fighting  is  unfair,  if  fair  warning  has  been  given, 
but  if  the  parties  have  bound  themselves  by  the  law  of  na- 
tions— such  as  it  is — not  to  use  this  or  that  weapon  or 
method,  a  breach  of  these  conventions  is  treachery.  Even 
so,  you  may  play  Association  Football  or  "Rugger"  but 
you  cannot  suddenly  throw  the  ball  you  have  agreed  only 
to  kick.  At  the  Hague  Peace  Conferences  of  1899  and  1907 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  157 

Germany  undertook  a  number  of  obligations — such  as 
not  to  bombard  undefended  towns  or  to  terrorize  non- 
combatants — which  she  has  drastically  ignored.  Indeed 
such  breaches  of  faith  are  declared  by  Dr.  von  Campe  to  be 
wrong  only  in  Civil  Law,  not  in  International  Law.  "A 
nation  which  against  its  vital  interest  would  observe  an 
international  treaty  would  commit  high  treason  against 
itself."  The  learned  German  jurist  does  not  perceive  that 
he  has  destroyed  all  possibility  of  that  International  Law 
of  which  he  treats.  His  countryman  Kant  was  more  clear- 
sighted. For  the  sixth  article  of  his  Treaty  for  "  Perpetual 
Peace,"  runs: 

"No  State  at  war  with  another  shall  countenance  such  modes 
of  hostility  as  would  make  mutual  confidence  impossible  in  a 
subsequent  state  of  peace;  such  are  the  employment  of  assassins 
(percussores) ,  breaches  of  capitulation,  the  instigation  and 
making  use  of  treachery  (perduellio)  in  the  hostile  State." 

Even  if  it  were  true  that  humanity's  demand  for  an  interna- 
tional ethic  protecting  non-combatants  and  mitigating  war 
is  a  logical  absurdity,  we  ought  not  rudely  to  dispel  a  de- 
lusion which  unlike  so  many  of  humanity's  delusions  makes 
for  a  better  world.  Life  is  psychological,  not  logical.  But  for 
once  it  is  humanity  and  not  Mr.  Shaw,  that  is  logical.  The 
world  was  really  not  born  yesterday,  as  some  of  our  writers 
seem  to  think,  and  by  its  unfortunately  long  practice  of  war 
it  has  arrived  at  many  a  convention  of  which  not  necessity 
is  the  mother,  but  convenience.  Non-combatants  and 
women  were  to  be  sacred  because  they  could  be  struck  out 
from  each  side  of  the  equation  without  affecting  the  mil- 
itary values.  There  have  always  been  people  who  urged 
that  the  more  frightful  war  was  made,  the  less  it  would  be 
practiced.  But  the  more  reasonable  view  has  prevailed 
that  since  there  always  would  be  wars,  they  should  be  made 


158  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

as  mild  as  possible.  Hence  did  the  mediaeval  Church  invent 
"the  Truce  of  God"  (denied  to-day  even  on  Christmas), 
hence  did  the  "Decree  of  Eternal  Pacification  of  1495" 
abolish  private  war.  Hence,  after  the  brutal  religious  and 
civil  wars  of  the  sixteenth  century  which  disgusted  Ariosto, 
Rabelais  and  Montaigne,  the  attempt  of  Grotius  in  1625 
and  of  Vattel  in  1758  to  humanize  war  and  limit  its  effects 
on  neutrals ;  hence  finally  the  Red  Cross  League  and  Hague 
Conventions. 

"I  saw,  says  Grotius,  in  the  whole  Christian  world  a  license 
of  fighting  at  which  even  barbarians  might  blush,  wars  begun 
on  trifling  pretexts  or  none  at  all,  and  carried  on  without  rever- 
ence for  any  divine  or  human  law,  as  if  that  one  declaration  of 
war  let  loose  every  crime." 

But  the  laws  that  were  to  be  silent  during  arms  were,  he 
protested,  only  the  laws  of  civil  life,  not  the  laws  of  natural 
justice  (dictata  recta  rationis).  In  his  great  work  De  Jure 
Belli  et  Pads,  the  Dutch  jurist  proceeded  to  lay  down  such 
natural  laws;  maintaining  against  his  countryman,  Eras- 
mus, that  war  thus  honorably  declared  and  bounded  was 
not  unchristian.  It  would  be  interesting  to  compare  his 
rules  with  those  of  The  Hague.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  he 
bans  poison,  or  poisoned  missiles,  burning  of  the  harvest, 
destruction  of  houses  or  works  of  art,  plundering  of  churches, 
sinking  of  piratical  ships  containing  innocent  passengers, 
killing  of  the  unarmed  or  the  old  or  women  and  children, 
causing  unnecessary  loss  of  life,  etc.,  etc. :  indeed,  all  his  laws 
might  be  summed  up  in  the  one  that  prohibits  everything 
tending  to  prevent  the  resumption  of  friendly  relations  between 
the  belligerents.  A  study  of  Grotius  enables  us  to  see  more 
clearly  how  Germany  has  sinned  against  the  light,  and  how 
much  cultivated  ground  has  been  re-swamped  by  the  Ger- 
man Ocean. 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  159 

But  it  was  not  left  to  the  year  1625  to  humanize  war. 
The  doctrine  of  Clausewitz  and  Mr.  Shaw  that  "war  is  the 
extreme  form  of  violence"  would  have  been  repudiated  by 
all  the  greatest  spirits  of  antiquity — from  Moses  to  Cicero 
and  Seneca,  from  Plato  to  Plutarch.  If  fight  we  must,  it 
is  still  men  that  are  fighting,  not  fiends  or  beasts. 

"Our  legislator,"  writes  Josephus,  defending  the  Jewish 
Kultur  against  Apion, 

"  would  have  us  treat  those  that  are  esteemed  our  enemies  with 
moderation;  for  he  doth  not  allow  us  to  set  their  country  on 
fire,  nor  permit  us  to  cut  down  those  trees  that  bear  fruit;  nay, 
further,  he  forbids  us  to  spoil  those  that  have  been  slain  in  war. 
He  hath  also  provided  for  such  as  are  taken  captive,  that  they 
may  not  be  injured,  and  especially  that  the  women  may  not 
be  abused." 

And  the  customs  Josephus  was  declaring  at  the  end  of  the 
first  century  were  already  over  a  thousand  years  old.  "  Non- 
combatants  to  be  spared,"  says  Plato's  Republic,  "no  houses 
to  be  burnt,  no  farms  to  be  devastated,  the  dead  to  be  hon- 
orably buried,  no  trophies  of  war  to  be  placed  in  the 
temple  of  the  gods."  While  thus  from  hoary  antiquity, 
we  find  man  laboring  to  minimize  the  bestiality  of  war,  it 
was  reserved  for  the  remorseless  logic  of  the  Germans  to  say 
that  since  war  is  bestial,  we  must  be  as  beastly  as  possible. 

Ill 

When,  however,  it  is  sought  to  soften  our  just  fury 
against  Germany  by  the  plea  that  not  all  Germans  are 
beasts,  we  enter  upon  more  reasonable  regions  of  contro- 
versy. There  indeed  we  come  upon  Burke's  immortal  con- 
tribution to  eirenics — that  you  cannot  draw  an  indictment 
against  a  whole  people.  No  less  an  an ti- German  than  Mr. 


l6o  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

Lloyd  George  has  said  (I  quote  the  report,  grammar  and 
all): 

"We  are  not  fighting  the  German  people.  The  German 
people  are  just  as  much  under  the  heel  of  the  Prussian  military 
caste,  and  more  so,  thank  God,  than  any  other  nation  of  Europe. 
It  will  be  a  day  of  rejoicing  for  the  German  peasant  and  artisan 
and  trader,  when  the  military  caste  is  broken.  (Cheers.)" 

That  Mr.  Lloyd  George  spoke  truly,  may  be  read  clearly 
in  a  German  letter  written  on  July  28,  1915,  and  vouched 
for  by  Dr.  David  Starr  Jordan,  Chancellor  of  Leland  Stan- 
ford University,  in  which  the  Junker  regards  the  war  not 
only  as  a  bid  for  the  mastery  of  the  world  but  as  the  salva- 
tion of  his  noble  order  from  the  stupid  people  (der  dumme 
Michel)  with  its  democratic  and  pacifist  chimeras.  Even 
without  such  testimony  it  was  obvious  that  from  the  mili- 
tants we  must  deduct  the  millions  of  Social  Democrats, 
who  have  only  become  militants  in  the  actual  crisis  of 
war,  and  that  against  Bernhardi  who  is  disavowed  by  the 
Intellectuals  as  practically  unknown  in  Germany  we  must 
set  such  writers  as  Captain  Persius,  the  well-known  naval 
expert,  who  not  three  weeks  before  the  war  published  in 
The  Peace  Movement,  issued  at  Berne,  a  strong  plea  for 
Mr.  Churchill's  suggestion  as  to  limitation  of  armaments, 
and  was  attacked  in  the  Kreuz-zeitung  of  last  December 
as  the  reputed  author  of  Der  Zusammeribruch,  a  work 
avowedly  written  to  prove  the  suicidal  results  of  a  clash 
between  the  British  and  German  fleets.  The  pacifist  and 
anti-absolutist  Jews  of  the  Berliner  Tageblatt,  the  journal 
to  which  Captain  Persius  is  attached,  occupy  of  course 
the  same  position.  And  before  the  war,  evidences  of  the 
existence  of  a  sane  minority  abounded  on  every  hand. 
Thus  the  Frankfurter  Zeitung  of  December  i4th,  1913, 
contains  a  report  of  a  speech  delivered  by  Pastor  Nithak- 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  l6l 

Stahn  on  "The  Moral  Code  of  Nations"  repudiating  the 
idea  that  this  is  not  the  same  for  all  nations,  asserting  that 
each  of  them  is  but  a  branch  on  the  great  tree  of  hu- 
manity, and  that  to  reach  this  common  ideal  we  must 
overcome: 

"  (i)  The  obsolete  ideal  of  national  arrogance,  (2)  The  romance 
of  war,  the  ideal  of  the  beast  of  prey,  not  of  man,  (3)  that 
nervous  and  immature  sense  of  honor  which  is  ever  ready  to 
unsheathe  the  sword."  l 

The  same  Frankfort  organ  on  December  igth  rejoiced  in 
the  prospective  Anglo-German  understanding.  In  the 
Reichstag  sitting  of  December  i2th,  Herr  A.  Alpers,  the 
member  for  Hanover,  exhorted  opposition  to  any  future 
armament  bills  and  pointed  to  the  readiness  repeatedly 
shown  by  the  British  Government  for  mutual  limitation 
of  ships.  And  nobody  in  Europe  has  denounced  armaments 
more  fearlessly  than  the  veteran  Professor  Brentano  of 
Munich  University.  Even  now,  with  war  at  full  blaze, 
voices  are  raised  against  the  mad  militarist  Kultur.  Thus, 
according  to  the  German  papers,  a  great-grandson  of 
Schiller,  Baron  von  Gleichen,  lecturing  to  an  audience  that 
filled  the  great  hall  of  the  Reichstag  to  its  utmost  capacity, 
derided  the  half-understood  catchwords  of  the  Kulturists 
and  what  Remain  Rolland  calls  "the  mobilization  of  the 
intellect  for  war."  "  Get  real  culture,"  he  told  them,  "  and 
you  will  get  the  brotherhood  of  the  nations." 

Militarism  in  fact  has  never  been  without  an  opposition 
even  in  the  palmy  days  directly  after  the  Franco-Prussian 
war.  From  an  address  delivered  at  Munich  in  1875  by  the 
late  Dr.  Dollinger  2  we  learn  that  there  were  then  two  par- 
ties in  Germany — the  one  looking  forward  to  its  becoming 

1  Cited  in  War  and  Peace,  January,  1914. 

2  Studies  in  European  History. 


1 62  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

again,  as  from  the  tenth  to  the  thirteenth  century,  the 
spiritual  leader  of  the  world,  and  the  other  predicting  "the 
speedy  downfall  of  the  empire  and  the  rushing  in  of  chaos." 
Thus  we  see  that  when  Germany  was  made  over  again  in 
his  own  image  by  Bismarck,  large  sections  escaped  the 
hypnosis,  and  remain  as  a  powerful  nucleus  for  a  modern 
State  conception. 

IV 

Nor  is  it  necessary  to  believe  in  all  the  atrocities  or  to  be- 
lieve that  the  genuine  ones  represent  more  than  a  jackboot 
minority.  Our  own  men  have  got  out  of  hand,  too,  some- 
times. The  early  Christians  and  even  the  latter-day  Jews 
have  been  accused  of  using  human  blood  in  their  mysterious 
rites — hate  is  a  marvellous  myth-maker.  In  Serbia  at  least 
we  know  from  Dr.  Ella  Scarlett-Synge  that  the  Bavarian 
regiments  behaved  excellently,  and  the  same  pleader  for 
fair  play  gives  a  certificate  of  decency  to  the  German 
internment  camps.  A  German  officer's  diary  issued  by 
the  British  Press  Bureau  in  November,  1914,  in  evidence  of 
the  vandalism  in  Belgium,  bears  also  proof  that  it  was  not 
abstract  malevolence.  Thus,  under  date  August  23d,  we 
read : — 

"Our  men  came  back  and  said  we  could  not  get  on  any  further 
as  the  villagers  were  shooting  at  us  from  every  house.  We  shot 
the  whole  lot,  16  of  them.  The  losses  in  our  regiment  (thirty 
killed  and  many  wounded)  were  caused  chiefly  by  villagers  who 
shot  at  us  from  the  houses.  The  men  were  absolutely  mad  at 
this  sneaking  way  of  fighting.  They  wanted  to  burn  everything 
and  they  succeeded  too  in  setting  light  to  several  houses." 

It  is  also  asserted  in  a  German  volume  on  pictorial  slanders 
that  a  picture  of  a  pogrom  that  appeared  in  the  German- 
Jewish  magazine  Ost  Und  West  was  passed  off  on,  and  by, 
Le  Journal  as  an  episode  in  Belgium.  A  child  whose  hands 


SOME  APOLOGISTS   FOR  GERMANY  163 

were  cut  off  figured  in  the  martyrology  but  must  have  been 
carried  off  by  the  Russians  who  came  to  England  via  Arch- 
angel, for  nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  produce  her.  As 
for  the  destruction  of  cathedrals  I  do  not  know  that  you 
can  shell  or  bomb  a  town  so  accurately  as  to  avoid  them, 
and  the  sudden  passion  for  mediaeval  architecture  among 
the  Philistines  of  my  acquaintance  is  not  convincing.  When 
I  hear  these  plaints  ad  nauseam  about  the  Cathedral  of 
Rheims,  I  cannot  help  recalling  a  passage  written  by  the 
poet  of  the  Gothic  Cathedral,  Victor  Hugo  himself,  who 
relates  casually  in  his  Choses  Vues,  how  a  month  before 
the  coronation  of  Charles  X  in  this  very  Cathedral  a  swarm 
of  masons  with  ladders  and  hammers  occupied  a  complete 
week  in  breaking  off  every  bit  of  projecting  sculpture  in 
the  world-famous  fagade — for  fear  a  piece  of  the  stone- 
work might  fall  on  the  King's  head.  Their  fragments 
encumbered  the  pavement  and  were  swept  away.  "I  long 
possessed  a  head  of  Christ  fallen  in  this  fashion,"  says 
Victor  Hugo. 


A  charwoman,  working  in  the  house  of  a  Jewish  friend 
of  mine,  startled  him  by  remarking  "Jews  is  a  bad  lot." 
But,  she  added  meditatively,  "Christians  is  wuss."  In 
so  far  as  the  apologists  argue — with  "Vernon  Lee" — that 
at  any  rate  Prussia  is  better  than  Russia,  since  whereas 
Social  Democracy  is  proscribed  in  Russia,  it  is  a  great 
political  party  in  Germany,  with  a  popular  press,  few  people 
except  Mr.  Wells  will  disagree.  (Mr.  Wells  is,  however,  not 
wrong  in  relying  upon  the  illogic  and  inefficiency  of  Russia, 
for  Social  Democrats  may  represent  their  party  in  the 
Duma,  though  they  have  to  disappear  as  swiftly  as  possible 
into  the  recesses  of  Russia  as  soon  as  its  dissolution  removes 
their  immunity.)  But  with  all  my  respect  for  Mr.  Morel  I 


164  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

cannot  follow  him,  when  he  tries  to  make  out  that  Germany 
is  more  sinned  against  than  sinning.  Under  the  title  of 
Ten  Years  of  Secret  Diplomacy  he  has  published  a  long 
cock-and-bull  story  (I  refer  merely  to  the  Gallic  cock  and 
John  Bull),  showing  that  France  and  England  were  in 
collusion  to  keep  Germany  out  of  colonies,  markets  and 
places  in  the  sun,  and  that  when  in  1906  the  representatives 
of  the  Powers  drew  up  the  Act  of  Algeciras  "in  the  name  of 
God  Almighty"  to  guarantee  the  independence,  integrity 
and  economic  freedom  of  Morocco,  a  secret  treaty  was 
already  in  existence  with  the  connivance  of  England, 
practically  partitioning  it  between  France  and  Spain — a 
partition  since  carried  out.  I  will  grant  Mr.  Morel  that, 
so  far  as  he  deals  with  facts,  his  book  is  an  excellent  illustra- 
tion of  "the  levity  of  war-politics"  and  the  tragi-comedy 
of  diplomacy.  I  will  even  concede  that  such  an  impartial 
authority  as  Sir  Harry  Johnston  confirms  the  tale  of  the 
constriction  of  German  colonial  expansion  at  every  possible 
point,  and  the  creation  by  France  at  least  of  protection- 
ist, areas  closed  to  her  rival.  In  Sir  Harry's  article,  The 
Problems  of  Germany,  fortunately  published  before  the  war, 
we  were  warned  that  Germany  "must  break  out  some- 
where" for  her  view  that  England's  veto  lay  across  her 
path,  though  distorted,  was  mainly  right: 

"England  who  at  conferences  and  by  treaties  and  under- 
standings was  willing  to  agree  to  Belgium,  the  United  States, 
Spain,  France,  Russia,  Portugal,  Greece,  Bulgaria,  getting, 
annexing,  occupying  something,  but  never  Germany  or  Austria, 
except  with  a  tremendous  outcry  and  veiled  threats  of  war,  .  .  . 
Germany  winces  yet  from  the  sermons  in  the  British  press  when- 
ever she  has  hungered  after  a  naval  station  at  Trieste,  a  port 
on  the  Euphrates  Delta,  or  a  Pacific  island.  And  even  while 
such  sermons  are  being  written  the  Anglo-Saxon  mouth  opens 
and  englobes  the  Malay  provinces  of  the  Kingdom  of  Siam.  .  .  . 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  165 

Yet  more  than  ever  Germany  was  in  need  of  an  outlet  for  her 
enormously  developed  industries.  She  wanted — as  also  Austria 
— lands  in  which  vast  quantities  of  raw  products  could  be  found 
or  grown — especially  cotton,  iron,  and  coal — and  to  which 
manufactures  could  be  sent.  And,  further,  there  was  that 
vaguely  defined  desire  which  comes  to  all  successful  peoples — 
the  wish  to  extend  the  home  empire  over  other  kingdoms,  to 
subjugate,  control,  educate  other  peoples.  Where  could  Ger- 
many look  to  found  such  an  empire  if  she  did  not  strike  soon?" 

In  the  same  vein  Mr.  J.  A..  Hobson  writes  1  that  "  the 
present  war  is  in  the  main  a  product  of  these  economic 
antagonisms,"  especially  "the  close  protection  of  the  French 
colonial  system,  recently  and  in  defiance  of  treaty  rights 
extended  to  Morocco, "  and  supplemented  by  the  fear  that 
Great  Britian  would  abandon  Free  Trade.  And  he  cites 
the  Belgian  economist,  Henri  Lambert,  to  show  Germany's 
apprehension  of  being  left  out  in  the  cold — Germany  with 
a  growing  population  of  seventy  millions  and  only  one- 
tenth  of  the  territory  possessed  by  Britain;  menaced  more- 
over by  Russia's  threat  of  serious  modifications  of  her 
present  commercial  treaty  with  Germany  when  it  expired 
in  1916. 

VI 

I  have  given  the  full  strength  of  the  Morel  case — and 
even  bolstered  it  up  by  quotations  from  Sir  Harry  Johnston 
who  is  now  all  for  dismembering  and  despoiling  Germany. 
And  I  have  done  so,  because  it  is,  as  the  Ibsen  lady  said  of 
literature,  "irrelevant."  The  world  ,had  passed  beyond 
"ordeal  by  battle."  Europe  had  moved  on:  cruel,  satanic 
even,  as  Mr.  Morel  had  shown  it  could  be  to  colored  and 
inferior  races,  the  great  advance  in  means  of  communica- 
tion was  unifying  it,  internationalizing  it.  The  fact  that 
1  Towards  International  Government. 


1 66  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

Germany  was  born  too  late  for  her  fair  share  in  the  spoils 
of  other  continents,  that  the  best  parts  of  the  globe  were 
staked  out,  was  not — in  the  phrase  of  her  own  Leibnitz — a 
" sufficient  reason"  for  setting  the  world  ablaze.  If  by  the 
filibustering  code  by  which  past  empires  have  been  won, 
Germany  was  theoretically  entitled  to  hew  out  an  empire 
in  her  turn,  it  is  precisely  her  application  of  this  code  that 
constitutes  her  treason  against  humanity.  For  it  was  a 
code  outworn  and  obsolescent,  that  even  in  its  prime  had 
never  been  accepted  consciously  and  in  all  its  logical  impli- 
cations. The  British  Empire  of  which  Germany  was  so 
jealous  was  only  a  nominal  empire.  It  had  grown  up  with- 
out design,  through  individual  activities,  trading  companies, 
and  historical  accidents.  It  had  no  cohesion,  no  protective 
tariffs.  The  seas  were  free.  Germany  was  welcome  to  all 
the  trade  she  could  do,  and  economists  say  that  with  Canada 
she  was  actually  doing  twice  the  trade  that  England  was. 
It  is  Germany  that  now  bids  fair  to  make  a  real  British 
Empire,  as  Napoleon  made  the  German  Empire. 

It  is  true,  France  tried  to  Frenchify  trade,  but  France 
would  have  crumbled  before  Germany  by  the  mere  decay  of 
her  population.  There  was  no  reason  whatever  for  the 
arbitrament  of  War;  the  pen  of  the  German  clerk  was 
mightier  than  the  sword.  If  England  unduly  favored 
France  it  was  in  sheer  terror  of  the  blonde  beast,  who,  even 
if  he  had  a  good  case  before  the  war,  has  retrospectively 
spoiled  it  by  a  display  of  strength  and  of  savagery  that 
shows  how  justified  this  apprehension  is.  The  course  of  the 
war  has  vindicated  the  assertion  of  Professor  Usher  in  his 
book  on  "Pan  Germanism"  that  "the  Germans  aim  at 
nothing  less  than  the  domination  of  Europe  and  the  world 
by  the  Germanic  race."  It  is  certainly  no  negligible  ob- 
server who  informed  us  before  the  war  that  "the  Germans 
consider  perfectly  feasible  the  construction  of  a  great  con- 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  167 

federation  of  States  including  Germany,  Austria,  Hungary, 
the  Balkan  States  and  Turkey,  which  would  control  a  great 
band  of  territory  stretching  south-east  from  the  North  Sea 
to  the  Persian  Gulf." 

It  is  urged  that  Germany  needed  either  colonies  to  re- 
ceive her  surplus  population  or  a  great  new  market  to  give 
them  employment  at  home.  I  deny  both  alternatives. 
When  Germany  says  "I  must  live,"  I  agree  cheerfully, 
but  when  she  says,  "I  must  live  outside  Europe,"  I  reply: 
"Je  n'en  wis  pas  la  necessite"  Such  colonies  as  were  open 
to  her  to  administer  as  German  colonies  were  incapable  of 
sustaining  white  populations,  and  in  point  of  fact  her 
emigration  had  ceased  of  late,  owing  to  the  improvement 
of  the  homeland.  If  it  is  said  that  nevertheless  a  point  of 
saturation  would  ultimately  be  reached  and  she  must  then 
either  have  the  new  market,  or  else  see  her  sons  absorbed 
by  non-German-Americas,  my  answer  is,  that  this  is  the 
best  possible  fate  for  them.  Why  having  attained  a  popu- 
lation of  nearly  seventy  millions  should  not  Germany  be 
satisfied  to  maintain  it  at  this  and  let  the  others  form  part 
of  new  geographical  and  political  creations?  Seventy 
millions  are  enough  to  preserve  Germanismus  in  all  its 
greatness  (not  to  mention  the  millions  of  Austria) — why 
this  bloodthirsty  clinging  to  every  German?  Let  this 
blood — if  it  is  so  marvellous — blend  with  and  improve 
the  blood  of  the  world  under  other  constellations.  The 
new  world  is  a  melting  pot,  not  a  preserving  pot.  A  redu- 
plicated Europe  would  be  a  bore.  ' ' The  old  order  changeth, 
yielding  place  to  the  new,"  and  the  German  may  well  be  as 
content  as  God  to  fulfil  himself  in  many  ways. 

The  friends  of  Germany  will  answer,  "This  is  all  very 
fine  philosophy!  But  coming  from  England,  it  is  her 
customary  British  cant.  What  of  her  Canada,  her  Aus- 
tralia, her  New  Zealand?  She  can  conserve  her  race  even 


1 68  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

in  emigration."  But  here  again  the  shadow  is  taken  for 
substance.  In  the  first  place  half  of  England's  emigrants 
go  to  the  United  States.  In  the  second  place  myriads  of 
Germans  go  to  Canada.  The  notion  that  Canada  can  be 
kept  English  (apart  from  a  great  province  being  already 
French)  is  a  British  illusion.  I  do  not  even  say  with  Gold- 
win  Smith  it  will  join  the  United  States — Germany  by  her 
war  has  stopped  that  for  a  long  time  if  not  for  all  time — but 
will  be  a  United  States — a  Melting  Pot  of  every  people 
under  the  sun,  and  even  its  English  institutions  will  not 
prevent  the  rise  of  a  new  political  entity  with  a  psychology 
of  its  own.  The  same  with  Australia.  The  idea  that  the 
British  Empire  can  be  populated  with  the  surplus  popula- 
tion of  two  little  islands  with  a  falling  birth-rate  still  further 
reduced  by  the  war,  is  a  fallacy  more  than  once  dealt 
with  in  this  book. 

VII 

As  for  the  desire  "which  comes  to  all  successful  peoples — 
the  wish  to  extend  the  home  empire  over  other  kingdoms,  to 
subjugate,  control,  educate  other  peoples" — that  is  the  most 
pernicious  of  all.  What  England  did  by  genius  Germany 
wishes  to  do  by  consciousness  and  talent.  But  genius,  de- 
spite the  pro-German  Carlyle  and  his  Goethe,  is  not  an  infi- 
nite capacity  for  taking  pains.  It  is  all  very  earnest  and 
touching,  this  devotion  to  Deutschland  ueber  Alles,  but  you 
cannot  by  taking  thought  add  a  foot  to  your  stature,  you 
cannot  get  by  cunning  what  England  got  by  luck,  you  can- 
not turn  back  the  stream  of  history.  Moreover,  just  when 
John  Bull  was  beginning  to  discover  that  Empire  in  the  Ger- 
man sense  was  a  mistake,  that  intensive  imperialism  or  the 
perfection  of  the  homeland  was  the  true  ideal,  just  as  he 
was  trying  by  the  door  of  self-government  to  back  out  of 
India,  into  which  he  had  blundered,  lo!  the  German  comes 


SOME  APOLOGISTS  FOR  GERMANY  169 

along  with  all  the  vulgarity  of  a  parvenu  coveting  and 
aping  the  life  whose  finer  principle  he  misses,  glorifying 
Empire  like  a  pirate  King,  commercializing  it  like  a  trades- 
man and  steeling  himself  by  a  pseudo-philosophy  to  justify 
the  crimes  we  had  begun  to  repent  of.  And  the  irony  of 
the  situation  is  that  we  hear  ourselves  summoned  to  follow 
this  gross  refraction  of  our  ideal  and  to  begin  copying  our 
own  caricature. 

This  is  why,  much  as  I  sympathize  with  Mr.  Morel's 
campaign  against  secret  diplomacy,  I  cannot  follow  him 
in  his  vindication  of  Germany.  In  the  Congo  business 
Mr.  Morel  had  to  deal  only  with  crude  facts  whose  face- 
value  was  their  all-in-all :  here  he  has  to  deal  with  complexi- 
ties and  world-currents  and  historic  phenomena,  and  his 
timeless  abstract  standards  of  equity  cannot  be  applied 
to  England,  France  and  Germany  as  though  these  were 
the  E,  F,  G  of  a  mathematical  proposition,  and  not  nations 
with  immensely  varying  histories,  temperaments,  ideals, 
and  ambitions.  His  notion  that  E,  F,  G  were  equal  en- 
tities, entitled  to  an  equal  share  in  the  partition  of  the 
backward  regions  of  the  earth,  is  a  mere  piece  of  ideology. 
G  by  her  refusal  to  limit  armaments  had  already  imposed 
an  intolerable  burden  on  E  and  F,  which  would  alone  have 
justified  them  in  opening  up  new  sources  of  revenue  to  her 
disadvantage.  She  meant  to  use  every  new  territorial 
gain  as  a  fulcrum  for  world-power  and  her  world-power, 
unlike  E's,  would  have  been  a  grinding  tyranny.  Dis- 
honorable as  was  the  partition  of  Morocco,  there  was  at 
least  no  danger  in  F  being  there.  Would  it  have  been 
equally  safe  to  enthrone  G  opposite  Gibraltar?  If  I  took 
a  knife  from  a  madman,  would  Mr.  Morel  say  I  was  a 
thief?  Let  Mr.  Morel  read  the  recent  tribute  to  Von  Hin- 
denburg  by  the  chief  of  his  staff,  if  he  still  fails  to  under- 
stand how  German  ambition  has  ruined  our  generation. 


THE  KAISER  AT  THE  JUDGMENT  BAR 

"For  in  those  days  might  only  shall  be  admired 
And  valor  and  heroic  virtue  called; 
To  overcome  in  battle,  and  subdue 
Nations,  and  bring  home  spoils  with  infinite 
Man-slaughter,  shall  be  held  the  highest  pitch 
Of  human  glory,  and  for  glory  done 
Of  triumph,  to  be  styled  great  conquerors, 
Patrons  of  mankind,  Gods  and  sons  of  Gods, 
Destroyers  rightlier  call'd  and  plagues  of  men." — Paradise  Lost. 

11 A  fav'rite  has  no  friend." — GRAY. 

Mediaeval  art  has  familiarized  us  ad  nauseam  with  Heaven 
and  Hell.  In  mosaic  and  enamel,  in  fresco  and  bronze, 
in  marble  and  jewel-work,  majestic  on  canvas  or  minute 
in  missal,  the  same  picture  perpetually  assails  us — the 
Judge  super-dominant  in  the  centre,  the  rising  dead  at 
his  feet,  the  saints  on  his  right  hand,  smug  and  symmetrical 
in  their  haloes,  the  sinners  on  his  left  en  route  for  the  torture 
chamber  below. 


This  conception  of  the  Last  Judgment  is  for  us  moderns 
dead — killed  by  our  sense  of  justice.  A  brave  attempt  to 
replace  it  by  a  better  has  just  been  made  by  "A  Humble 
Clerk"  in  a  book  called  The  Grand  Assize,  which  in  a  more 
sensible  world  than  ours  would  at  once  have  been  adopted 
as  a  Sunday  school  prize.  The  ethical  basis  of  this  new 
"Last  Judgment"  is  that  "anyone  who  looks  into  his  own 
nature  must  feel  his  brotherhood  with  all  who  have  been 
found  out."  Divine  punishment,  not  calculated  to  re- 

170 


THE   KAISER  AT  THE  JUDGMENT  BAR  171 

generate  this  nature  by  suppressing  the  evil  germs  and 
developing  the  good,  is  merely  a  barbarous  futility.  The 
Judge  is  therefore  no  aloof  avenger,  but  a  friend  and  brother; 
no  prisoner  is  brought  to  the  bar  unless  he  is  so  self-satisfied 
that  the  leaven  of  better  impulses  is  not  working  of  itself, 
nor  is  he  then  accused  except  by  himself.  The  only  Advo- 
cate who  appears  is  briefed  for  his  side,  and  the  Judge, 
all  love  and  pity,  sums  up  and  delivers  a  sentence  whose 
purpose  is  purification. 

Before  this  bar  "our  humble  clerk"  arraigns  the  leading 
types  of  our  day,  from  the  Plutocrat  to  the  Derelict,  from 
the  Actor  to  the  Daughter  of  Joy,  from  Mrs.  Grundy  to  the 
Party  Politician,  and  to  create  all  these  so  various  trials 
obviously  requires  no  small  knowledge  of  the  world  and 
the  human  heart.  One  suspects  that  the  author  is  that 
rara  avis,  a  priest  to  whom  religion  is  a  call  as  well  as  a 
calling,  and  who  has  a  touch  of  the  spiritual  genius  as  well 
as  the  humility  of  St.  Francis.  Where,  unless  weary  world- 
lings had  poured  out  to  him  their  egotistic  troubles,  could 
he  have  gained  this  uncanny  insight  into  the  windings 
of  their  ways  and  the  labyrinths  of  their  hearts?  Especially 
is  this  borne  in  upon  us  when  such  a  figure  as  "The  Actor" 
appears  before  the  Divine  tribunal — and  misses  his  audience 
badly!  Since  Browning  vivisected  Bishop  Blougram  there 
has  been  no  such  incisive  yet  pitiful  study  of  a  complex 
modern  temperament.  Indeed,  we  find  Browning's  Bishop 
uttering  the  very  core  of  the  new  gospel — 

"No,  when  the  fight  begins  within  himself, 
A  man's  worth  something  .  .  '." 

n 

The  problem  of  "The  Grand  Assize"  is  thus  threefold. 
First,  to  set  out  Everyman's  spiritual  failure  as  he  sees  it 


172  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

in  his  own  heart,  despite  the  outer  gauds  of  success;  secondly 
— since  Everyman  is  good  as  well  as  bad — to  say  all  that 
can  be  said  in  his  favor,  and  finally  to  discover  a  way  out 
for  the  soul  through  its  tangle  of  evil.  The  Plutocrat,  for 
example,  who  has  risen  to  riches  on  the  ruins  of  a  thousand 
lives,  has  yet  benefited  industry  and  art,  and  been  unhappy 
in  his  home  life,  and  by  his  damnation  to  a  life  of  poverty 
is  to  have  the  chance  of  winning  his  way  back  to  the  human 
brotherhood.  It  is  a  method  which  may  be  fruitfully  ap- 
plied in  all  directions,  and  it  is  not  surprising  that  the  author 
applies  it  to  the  Kaiser. 

Nor  is  it  surprising  that  under  this  method  the  Kaiser 
is  far  from  appearing  the  vulgar  ogre  of  the  British  car- 
toonist, though  there  is  humor  enough  in  the  figure  he 
presents  before  the  Judge — whom  he  salutes  as  an  equal, 
and  before  whom,  "being  hopelessly  mechanical/'  he  be- 
haves "as  at  a  court-martial."  Nevertheless,  I  am  afraid 
that  in  this  one  instance  the  charity  of  even  our  new  St. 
Francis  has  failed  before  his  patriotism,  and  that  he  has 
not  sought  so  eagerly,  as  with  his  other  occupants  of  the 
dock,  to  furnish  the  Advocate  with  an  extenuating  plea. 
Even  the  Judge  betrays  for  once  a  British  bias,  and  his 
judgment  has  the  severity  of  Draco  rather  than  the  com- 
passionateness  of  Christ.  It  is  true  the  Kaiser  is  not  to  be 
put  into  a  cage,  as  the  British  workman  demands,  but  it 
jars  one's  sense  of  the  judicial,  not  to  mention  the  god-like, 
to  find  the  Judge  telling  him  "Only  by  appealing  to  the 
brute  in  man  did  you  gain  your  empire  over  the  masses." 

m 

The  case  against  the  Kaiser  is  surely  dark  enough — the 
childish  passion  for  soldiers,  the  mail-cart  fist,  the  mega- 
lomania, the  vanity  of  a  Jack-of-all-arts,  the  epileptic  out- 


THE   KAISER  AT  THE  JUDGMENT  BAR  173 

bursts  of  rage,  the  reactionary  medievalism  with  its  Tor- 
quemada-like  ruthlessness — to  be  in  no  need  of  British 
blacking.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  the  Advocate  would 
surely  find  ample  material  for  the  other  side  of  the  balance- 
sheet.  He  would  plead  that  not  by  appealing  to  the  brute 
in  man  but  to  the  soul  in  man  had  the  Kaiser  gained  his 
empire  over  the  masses:  by  giving  his  subjects  a  shining 
example  of  labor  and  prayer  and  purpose.  "  While  other 
Kings/'  he  would  say,  "have  been  sunk  in  debauchery, 
his  life  has  been  a  model  of  domesticity  and  temperance; 
while  others  have  given  laws  only  to  fashion  and  folly,  he 
has  infused  his  ideals  even  into  his  school-children's  copy- 
books; while  other  Courts  have  reeked  with  inanity,  he  has 
chosen  for  companions  the  leaders  of  thought  and  life,  so 
that  in  his  kingdom  science  and  literature  were  honored  as 
jockeys  and  play-actors  elsewhere;  he  has  studied  at  first- 
hand all  European  problems,  and  while  the  majority  of  rulers 
must  rely  upon  an  Aaron  for  their  language,  he  has  crystal- 
lized his  thoughts  with  such  epigrammatic  eloquence  that 
they  have  turned  into  proverbs.  For  a  generation  he  has 
kept  the  peace  in  face  of  the  most  militarist  gang  in  Europe, 
and  his  resolute  patience  was  only  sapped  by  their  arro- 
gance. As  a  youth  he  had  the  courage  to  oust  Bismarck: 
as  a  man  he  has  not  recoiled  before  even  a  world  in  arms. 
And  if,  my  lord,  he  feels  himself  your  favorite,  that  I  sub- 
mit is  only  what  some  of  the  greatest  figures  in  history 
have  felt,  from  David  your  Psalmist  to  the  British  Crom- 
well. It  is  only  an  excess  of  their  virtue — the  virtue  of 
faith." 

IV 

Hearing  which,  the  Judge  would — I  imagine — wind  up: 
"Your  punishment,  prisoner  at  the  bar,  shall  be  to  be  born 
again,  but  of  Belgian  refugees  in  poverty,  and  a  modern 


174  THE   WAR   FOR   THE    WORLD 

man  of  genius  instead  of  a  mediaeval  man  of  talent.  Hence, 
what  you  shall  strive  for  shall  be  Brotherhood,  not  Empire, 
and  in  place  of  a  world  of  flatterers  and  parasites  to  magnify 
each  mediocre  gift,  there  shall  be  round  you  a  world  of 
-enemies  and  disbelievers  to  depreciate,  flout  and  deny  you. 
Instead  of  the  crown  of  sovereignty  you  shall  wear  the 
crown  of  thorns.  You  shall  know  no  glory  of  triumph 
but  only  the  tragedy  of  laboring  in  the  darkness  for  a  cause 
that  shall  seem  hopeless,  till  at  last,  fainting  and  heart-sick 
at  the  sight  of  cities  desolated  and  homes  death-stricken, 
and  millions  of  men  turned  into  manure-heaps,  you  shall 
cry  out:  'My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me?' 
And  in  that  moment  perchance  through  the  great  blackness 
you  shall  see  the  glimmer  of  light.'' 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA 

"  Destinie  this  huge  chaos  turmoyling." — EDMUND  SPENCER. 


That  the  drama  has  ceased  to  hold  the  mirror  up  to 
nature  or  to  uplift  our  age  by  its  art,  is  a  proposition  urged 
with  increasing  frequency  and  uneasiness.  The  war,  with 
its  great  moral  issues  and  its  high  fate-driven  personalities, 
has  deepened  this  sense  of  a  wasted  or  perverted  instru- 
ment. The  war  has  provided  the  themes,  urges  M.  Victor 
Giraud,  the  editor  of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  it  only 
remains  for  writers  to  find  a  modern  framework  for  a  drama 
which  shall  be  to  our  generation  what  the  classic  drama  was 
to  our  forefathers. 

Nearly  twenty  years  before  the  war  we  find  Maeterlinck 
defining  the  same  want.  "When  I  go  to  the  theatre,"  he 
said  in  his  essay,  Le  Tragique  Quotidien,  "it  seems  to 
me  that  I  am  passing  some  hours  with  my  ancestors." 
Dramatists,  he  explained,  continued  to  draw  their  inspira- 
tion from  violence,  whereas  "the  greater  part  of  our  lives 
passes  far  from  blood  and  cries  and  swords.  Our  tears  have 
become  silent,  invisible,  almost  spiritual."  Hence  the 
"material  sublime"  had  ceased  to  appeal.  "Violated  vir- 
gins and  imprisoned  citizens"  were  but  the  outworn  motifs 
of  the  obsolescent  theatre  of  "blood,  external  tears  and 
death."  The  Sage  sitting  by  his  lamp,  a  hand  opening 
or  closing  a  door,  a  ray  of  light  through  a  casement,  a 
shadow  on  a  blind — such  were  the  only  legitimate  effects 
open  to  the  modern  dramatist,  if  his  color-scale  was  to  be 


176  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

as  subdued  and  subtle  as  life's.  And  in  1904,  in  Le  Drame 
Moderne,  our  poet  noted  with  satisfaction  that  this  inter- 
nalization  of  the  drama  was  duly  proceeding  in  Bjornson, 
Hauptmann,  and  especially  Ibsen,  and  he  looked  forward 
to  a  still  more  pacific  theatre,  our  clearer  conscience  and 
broader  love  eliminating  many  even  of  the  spiritual  con- 
flicts on  which  the  older  drama  hinged.  In  the  end  the 
modern  theatre  might  be  "a  theatre  of  peace,  of  beauty 
without  tears." 

One  has  only  to  turn  to  Maeterlinck's  latest  utterance, 
The  Hour  of  Destiny — to  see  how  grimly  life  has  taught 
him  to  contradict  himself.  His  cry  now  is  of  "ruins  and 
sacrifices,  nameless  tortures  and  numberless  dead,"  and 
we  are  enjoined  to  destroy  "root  and  branch,"  and  "even 
against  our  own  sense  of  pity  and  generosity" — as  ruth- 
lessly as  Samuel  hewed  Agag  in  pieces  before  the  Lord — 
an  enemy  who  is  "in  secret  alliance  with  the  evil  influences 
of  the  earth."  For  Maeterlinck  is  a  Belgian — and  no 
longer  a  Belgian  Shakespeare  or  a  Belgian  mystic,  brood- 
ing on  "The  Treasure  of  the  Humble,"  but  a  Belgian 
Avenger  of  Blood. 

II 

Among  our  dramatic  critics — drawn  for  the  most  part 
from  the  genteel  circles  of  a  sophisticated  and  pacific 
civilization — a  similar  reaction  against  violence  had  taken 
place,  if  without  the  Maeterlinckian  profundity.  They 
had  seen  the  drama  become — in  the  Robertsonian  theatre — 
a  storm  in  a  teacup.  They  had  seen  the  disappearance  of 
the  robustious  actor  and  the  growth  of  the  natural,  if  not 
always  audible,  jeune  premier.  They  had  believed — with 
that  admirable  light  comedian,  Mr.  Charles  Hawtrey — 
that  the  day  of  the  high  tragedian  is  over,  though  he  might 
linger  on  in  those  occasional  galvanizations  of  Shakespeare 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  177 

which  piety  for  the  dead  classics  would  continue  to  inspire. 
But,  in  truth,  Shakespeare  seemed  as  barbarous  to  them  as 
he  had  seemed  to  Voltaire.  Ignorant  of  life,  all  the  flam- 
boyance of  passion  and  color,  all  the  odd  gleams  of  purity 
and  beauty,  all  the  pathos  and  grotesquerie  that  challenge 
the  artist's  eye  from  Clapham  to  Martaban,  had  ceased 
to  exist  for  them  when  these  things  went  out  of  fashion  on 
the  stage.  All  characters  not  common  as  City  clerks  were 
improbable;  sentiments  not  expressed  currently  in  drawing- 
rooms  were  fustian.  They  recognized  comedy  by  soda-water 
syphons  and  cigarettes,  and  melodrama  by  pistols.  That 
pistols  might  consist  with  comedy,  or  cigarettes  with  tragedy 
— even  blank  verse  tragedy — they  could  not  conceive. 

The  war  must  change  all  that.  It  has  demonstrated  that, 
far  from  growing  more  inward,  life  is  more  crudely  ex- 
ternal than  ever.  It  is  still  heroic  and  vulgar  in  the  gran- 
diose old  fashion.  There  are  soldiers,  not  chocolate,  but 
iron,  there  are  traitors  and  bullies.  There  are  clamorous 
and  riotous  crowds  that  pillage  and  run  amok,  there  are 
love-makings  and  clownings  under  the  shadow  of  death, 
there  are  monstrous  coincidences,  impudently  improbable. 
It  is,  in  fact,  melodrama  that  stands  vindicated,  if  not  in 
its  method,  at  least  in  its  material.  Even  the  spy  does, 
it  appears,  really  exist,  though  he  is  revealed — in  the 
German  variety — rather  as  a  great  soldier-soul  and  martyr 
than  as  the  comic  Judas  of  our  theatres.  And  after  the 
revelation  of  Germany's  scientific  ruthlessness  and  im- 
perial ambitions  we  can  no  longer  scoff — like  Shakespeare 
and  the  Elizabethan  critics — at  Marlowe's  picture  of 
"Tamburlaine  the  Great," 

"He  that  calls  himself  the  scourge  of  Jove, 
The  Emperor  of  the  world  and  earthly  God." 

Even  the  "swank "  of  Tamburlaine's  chariot  drawn  by  bitted 
and  bridled  kings  has  a  cartoon-truth,  if  not  a  literal  truth. 


178  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

III 

And  with  the  vindication  of  melodrama  goes  the  vindica- 
tion of  high  tragedy — indeed,  Greek  tragedy  was  literally 
melodrama.  High  tragedy  we  thought  high-falutin.  We 
had  not,  we  moderns,  sentiments  of  such  an  amplitude. 
As  for  verse,  who  spoke  it?  The  newspaper — and  newspaper 
prose — that  was  modern  life.  Yet  suddenly  we  have  seen 
every  newspaper  bursting  out  into  poetry — and  quite 
shamelessly  and  daily,  as  though,  under  the  pressure  and 
urge  of  national  emotion,  verse  was  actually  the  natural 
language  of  speech.  I  remember  at  the  first  night  of  Leng- 
yePs  study  of  the  Japanese  "Typhoon" — a  production 
we  owe  to  the  artistic  passion  of  the  ill-fated  Laurence 
Irving — the  amazement  of  critics  and  audience  alike  at 
the  self-immolating  patriotism  of  the  little  yellow  men, 
at  the  utter  absorption  of  the  individual  life  in  the  service 
of  the  State,  a  sacrifice  carried  on  as  continuously  and  un- 
falteringly in  periods  of  peace  as  in  the  heats  of  war.  That 
the  germs  of  patriotic  abnegation  existed  in  England  too, 
and  might  be  developed  to  equal  intensity  at  a  certain 
temperature,  was  unknown,  or  rather  forgotten.  And, 
because  it  was  forgotten,  patriotism  was  relegated  to  melo- 
drama and  the  music-halls.  It  was  the  last  refuge,  not  of 
a  scoundrel,  but  of  a  comic  singer.  To  have  rendered  it 
in  the  key  of  high  art  would  have  confused  the  critics  and 
closed  the  box-office.  Tragedy  was  equally  taboo.1  I 

1  A  soldier  back  from  the  front,  who  signs  himself  "Wounded,"  laments  in 
a  letter  to  the  Times  of  December  6,  1915:  "The  general  rottenness  of 
taste  and  feeling  in  a  country  which  can  amuse  itself  with  'Charlie  Chaplin' 
in  days  like  these.  Those  of  us  who  got  home  wounded  had  our  depression 
confirmed." 

On  the  general  fatuity  of  our  stage  of  which  the  latest  example  is  a  "Dis- 
raeli" up-to-date,  pro-Russian  and  anti-Turkish,  my  wise  woman  writes  to 
me:  "Our  London  stage  has  been  ruined  by  London  'Society' — a  silly  out-of- 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  179 

imagine  that  the  typical  producer  of  his  day,  Charles 
Frohman,  never  produced  an  "  unhappy  ending,"  never 
allowed  his  dramatists  to  suggest  that  a  beloved  and  blame- 
less person  might  be  crushed  mercilessly  between  two 
giant  forces  at  clash.  Yet  this  "unhappy  ending"  has 
proved  far  less  depressing  than  many  a  Frohman  comedy. 
In  no  Frohman  comedy  shall  you  find  a  curtain-tag  as 
beautiful  and  exalting  as  his  own  last  speech:  "Why  fear 
death?  It  is  life's  finest  adventure."  That,  spoken  not  in 
the  academic  armchair,  but  in  the  Lusitania,  settling  down 
to  her  doom,  will  forever  cling  round  his  memory  like  an 
aureole  of  light.  It  is  the  great,  the  Plutarchian  word. 
Before  I  knew  of  it,  my  mind  kept  going  back  on  our 
talks,  seeing  him — as  he  sat  at  his  favorite  view  over  the 
Thames — overbrooded  as  in  a  Maeterlinck  play  by  a  pall 
of  destiny,  that  made  his  unconscious  sunniness  and  op- 
timism only  the  more  tragic.  But  now,  by  his  great  last 
word,  he  has  dispelled  the  pall  and  has  fixed  an  image  of 
himself  more  radiant  and  lovable  than  ever.  He  stands, 
as  it  were,  tiptoeing  into  the  unknown,  welcoming  the  last 
great  adventure,  so  that 

"  Eternal  sunshine  gathers  round  his  head." 

date  sort  of  business.  'Society'  in  that  sense  reached  its  zenith  during  the 
culmination  of  the  'Ancien  Regime'  which  gave  its  great  Drama  to  France; 
and  English  'Society'  has  been  a  sort  of  pale  imitation  of  it,  very  expensive 
and  giving  no  adequate  return  either  in  enjoyment  or  direction  to  the  nation 
which  supports  it.  The  tragedy  of  the  Nineteenth  Century  is  'missed 
opportunities.'  The  Drama  has  been  suffocated  by  the  unintelligent  in- 
heritors of  wealth  and  their  associates;  almost  the  only  good  plays  I  have 
seen  are  the  cynical  ones,  'The  Importance  of  Being  Earnest,'  'The  Return 
of  the  Prodigal,'  and  both  their  authors  succumbed  to  the  unhealthy  social 
atmosphere;  they  were  'gassed'  by  it.  Modern  conditions  make  the  theatre 
and  the  newspaper  such  expensive  things  to  run  that  money  has  shed  its 
curse  over  both  of  them.  Yet  there  are  lots  of  talent,  good  will  and  generosity 
amongst  us  and  we  could  provide  very  appreciative  audiences  it  we  could 
afford  to  pay  for  our  seats." 


l8o  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

If  only  he  had  had  the  courage  to  put  his  own  larger  self 
on  the  stage! 

But,  alas!  the  Stage  Society — free  from  the  commercial 
conditions  that  hem  the  managers  and  actor-managers— 
has  none  the  more  ventured  to  present  life  at  its  true  height 
or  depth.  It  has  only  replaced  the  " happy  ending"  by 
the  ugly  ending.  As  if  to  be  unpleasant — the  phrase  is 
actually  flaunted  by  Bernard  Shaw — sufficed  to  create 
art!  The  Stage  Society,  though  it  has  some  original  plays 
to  its  credit,  has  done  nothing  to  win  back  the  lost  prov- 
ince of  poetry;  indeed,  its  members  seem  to  have  flat- 
tered themselves  they  were  "seeing  life,"  much  as  the  night- 
bird  imagines  he  is  seeing  it. 

IV 

The  passing  of  the  high  tragedian — so  cheerfully  re- 
corded by  Mr.  Charles  Hawtrey — meant  the  loss  of  the 
drama's  highest  organ — poetic  tragedy — and  with  it  a 
shrinking  of  human  values.  That  sense  of  the  greatness 
of  human  life,  which  the  most  ranting  Shakespearean  actor 
conveyed,  which  the  veriest  barn-stormer  adumbrated, 
which  lingered  like  the  echoes  of  thunder  even  in  the 
tragedies  of  Sheridan  Knowles,  had  vanished  from  our 
post-prandial  theatre.  No  wonder  that  the  Germans 
(whose  artisan  class  in  the  very  stress  of  Armageddon  built 
for  itself  a  great  classic  theater)  considered  Shakespeare 
theirs,  and  the  Englishman  a  "slacker."  *  There  is  a 

1  "Speaking  in  the  Prussian  Diet  last  Thursday,  Herr  Von  Loebel,  the 
Minister  of  the  Interior,  said  that  all  plays  which  had  been  passed  by  the 
Censorship  before  the  war  had  been  reconsidered  upon  the  principle  that  the 
programmes  must  now  have  'a  serious  moral  basis.'  Between  August  i, 
1914,  and  the  end  of  1915,  eighty-one  plays  were  forbidden  in  Berlin  alone." 
(Times,  March,  1916.) 

"  The  programme  for  the  theatrical  week  hi  Berlin  ending  January  17 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  l8l 

subtle  relation  between  all  a  nation's  activities,  and  in 
an  age  when  war  is  far  more  science  and  organization  than 
brute  courage,  the  British  cult  of  brainlessness  on  the  stage 
could  not  but  be  a  sinister  index  of  military  laches.  And 
if  our  working  classes  rose  so  slowly  to  the  conception  of 
national  sacrifice,  may  it  not  be  because  no  effort  had  been 
made  to  use  the  theatre  to  cultivate  those  ideals  and  im- 
pulses, the  traditional  channel  for  which  their  estrange- 
ment from  the  Church  had  choked  up?  I  do  not  mean  that 
the  theatre  should  have  appealed  for  recruits  or  for  more 
devotion  in  the  munition  workers,  but  that  it  should  have 
fostered  that  habit  of  mind  and  fineness  of  temper  which 
would  have  made  such  appeals  superfluous.  What  we  need 
from  our  stage  is  a  drama  that  helps  us  to  move  habitually 
on  the  high  plane  to  which  we  are  roused  by  the  death  and 

presents  some  interesting  features,  and  offers  a  striking  contrast  to  the 
theatrical  fare  of  London  in  the  same  period.  To  begin  with,  there  are 
two  large  houses  in  which  first-class  opera  is  performed  every  night,  and 
two  others  in  which  music  of  a  lighter  character  may  be  heard.  Among  the 
operas  are  'Tannhauser,'  'The  Flying  Dutchman,'  'Siegfried,'  'Lohen- 
grin,' 'Hoffmann's  Tales,'  'Rigoletto,'  'The  Marriage  of  Figaro,'  Weber's 
' Freischiitz,'  'La  Traviata.'  In  three  theatres  we  have  plays  by  Shake- 
speare: 'Hamlet'  (hi  two  houses),  'Twelfth  Night,'  'Julius  Caesar,'  'The 
Comedy  of  Errors,'  and  'Midsummer  Night's  Dream.'  Schiller's  plays, 
with  their  historical  and  patriotic  teaching,  are  greatly  in  evidence:  'Die 
Jungfrau  von  Orleans,'  'Maria  Stuart,'  'Wallenstein's  Tod,'  Goethe's 
'Faust'  (first  and  second  parts),  and  'Gotz  von  Berlichingen '  are  being 
performed  hi  two  houses.  Ibsen  seems  in  great  demand,  especially  his 
'  Rosmersholm,'  and  well  known  and  popular  dramatists  like  Gustav 
Freitag,  Hauptmann,  and  Sudermann  figure  largely  on  the  list.  Looking  at 
the  programmes  of  the  ten  best  theatres  in  Berlin  for  the  seven  days,  between 
January  9  and  January  17,  we  have  forty-five  different  plays  and  operas, 
not  one  of  which  is  not  a  great  dramatic  or  musical  possession,  not  only 
of  Germany  but  of  the  world."  (Daily  Chronicle,  January  13,  1916.) 

About  the  same  period  the  same  organ  said  of  a  new  revue  at  the  Em- 
pire: "A  newcomer  is  Miss ,  who  disrobes  by  degrees,  with  a 

naive  insouciance  rare  even  at  that  historic  house."  It  is  only  fair  to  add, 
however,  that  the  Tageszeitung  bemoans  the  impotence  of  decent  Germans 
in  their  efforts  to  get  a  pure  stage. 


1 82  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

heroism  of  our  soldiers  and  our  sons,  by  the  agony  and  as- 
piration of  our  country.  A  nation  that  never  breathes  the 
mountain  air  of  high  art,  nor  ever  takes  the  sacrament  of 
poetry  in  common,  is  not  likely  to  sustain  itself  long  in  the 
rarefied  and  glacial  air  of  sacrifice.  A  nation  whose  greatest 
actors  are  drawn  off  to  the  music-halls  is  not  likely  to  dis- 
entangle itself  from  commercialism  when  the  hour  for 
heroism  strikes;  a  nation  that  feeds  its  spiritual  fires  upon 
the  slag  and  ashes  of  dead  formulae  is  not  likely  to  burn 
with  a  clear  flame. 


In  what  form,  however,  can  M.  Victor  Giraud's  demand 
for  a  drama  suitable  to  our  own  age  be  satisfied?  The  old 
classic  drama  of  every  country  had — as  Maeterlinck  has 
pointed  out  in  a  preface  to  Mr.  Sutro's  play,  "The  Cave  of 
Illusion" — a  background  of  supernatural  powers  who  lent 
to  the  action  the  necessary  depth,  mystery  and  grandeur. 
This  background,  blotted  out  or  at  least  befogged  by 
modern  conceptions,  must — he  urges — be  restored  in  some 
form  or  other,  if  our  drama  is  to  be  raised  to  the  atmosphere 
of  "Hamlet,"  "CEdipus"  or  "Antigone."  Such  atmos- 
phere as  Ibsen  achieves  in  his  social  dramas  Maeterlinck 
believes  to  be  merely  unhealthy  and  unbreathable. 

It  is  true,  of  course,  that  we  are  at  a  transitional  moment 
in  which  neither  Jove  nor  Jehovah,  neither  the  Furies  nor 
the  Fiends,  neither  the  ghost  in  "Hamlet"  nor  the  witches 
in  "Macbeth"  correspond  to  our  sense  of  the  vast  mys- 
terious forces  beyond  and  around  our  little  life.  And  this 
uncertainty  is  accentuated  by  the  war  and  finds  expression 
in  the  candid  and  naive  confession  of  many  unphilosophical 
people  that  they  are  waiting  to  see  by  its  issue  whether  there 
is  a  God  or  not.  In  such  a  period  the  hack  dramatist, 
shrinking  from  the  ancient  supernatural  background,  and 


THE   WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  x       183 

having  no  substitute  in  a  personal  sense  of  the  universe, 
produces  not  art  at  all  but  photography.  Our  stage  figures 
have  the  sharp-cut  shallow  objectivity  of  cardboard  char- 
acters in  a  toy  theatre  or  the  Indians  and  cowboys  of  the 
cinematograph.  But  if  this  war,  with  all  its  world-tragedy 
and  epical  happenings,  does  not  suggest  to  us  a  modern 
handling  of  the  drama,  or  something  nobler  than  the  glorifi- 
cation of  the  Briton  who  stays  at  home  to  outwit  German 
spies  by  his  superior  brain-power,  we  may  well  agree  with 
our  admirable  light  comedian  that  upon  the  high  tragedian 
the  curtain  has  been  rung  down. 

Not  that  this  nobler  drama  is  half  so  necessary  to-day — 
when  life  itself  is  exalting  enough — as  it  was  in  the  piping 
times  of  peace.1 

1  A.  letter  written  by  me  to  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette  in  March,  1913,  on 
"Theatre  Abstainers"  shows  how  the  masses  of  English  people  are  left  even 
in  normal  times  without  uplifting  influences  whether  artistic  or  spiritual. 

"  SIR, — Last  week  you  quoted  the  Church  Times  as  saying  '  there  are  more 
people  who  object  to  the  theatre  altogether  than  there  were  in  the  drab 
days  of  the  Victorian  era.'  In  the  spirit  of  Oliver  Twist,  I  immediately 
purchased  the  paper,  and  was  duly  edified  to  read  that  the  event  of  the 
season  was  'Joseph  and  His  Brethren' — a  purely  pagan  play — while  'The 
Doctor's  Dilemma' — an  amoral  exposition  of  the  artist — came  as  a  special 
delight  to  those  who  had  been  shocked  by  'Androcles  and  the  Lion' — a 
Christian  mystery-play. 

"But  what  startled  me  most  was  the  heading:  'The  Drama — Retrospect.' 
Of  course,  I  soon  realized  that  Lent  was  full  stop  to  the  theatrical  period  of 
the  Church,  but  I  am  left  wondering  how  absence  of  art  promotes  spiritual 
purification. 

"Do  the  pious  take  down  their  pictures  in  Lent,  I  wonder,  or  cease  to 
read  Wordsworth  and  Shakespeare?  And  does  the  old  self-denying  ordi- 
nance apply  to  the  new  cinema?  May  they  witness  '  Shakespeare's  Immortal 
Tragedy' — as  the  cinema  posters  advertise  'Hamlet' — if  the  play  is  purged 
of  words?  May  they  have  'Hamlet'  without  the  prince  of  poets? 

"But  these  abstainers  are,  after  all,  temporary.  The  seriousness  of  the 
situation  lies  in  the  almost  total  separation  between  the  Puritan  classes 
and  the  Stage.  Nor,  in  an  era  of  pyjama  plays,  can  one  say  the  Church 
Times  is  unjustified  in  warning  us  that  the  family  party  is  being  driven 
more  and  more  from  the  theatre. 

"A  generation  may  arise  that  knows  not  even  'Joseph.'    But  this  is  all 


184  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

To-day  a  theatrical  form  of  "Tipperary"  may  be  even 
more  needful  as  a  relaxation  from  the  over-stimulus.  Nor 
is  it  necessary  that  even  of  the  nobler  drama  the  theme 
should  be  the  war.  Topical  art  is  a  dubious  and  dangerous 
province.  "  We  do  not  find,"  wrote  Matthew  Arnold,  "  that 
'The  Persae'  occupied  a  particularly  high  rank  among  the 
dramas  of  ^schylus  because  it  represented  a  matter  of 
contemporary  interest.  .  .  .  The  Greeks  felt,  no  doubt, 
with  their  exquisite  sagacity  of  taste,  that  an  action  of 
present  times  was  too  near  them,  too  much  mixed  up  with 
what  was  accidental  and  passing  to  form  a  sufficiently 
grand,  detached  and  self-subsistent  object  for  a  tragic 
poem." 

Nevertheless,  topical  art  with  all  its  dangers  is  not  to 
be  banished,  and  if  ^Eschylus,  in  472  B.  C.,  could  dram- 
atize the  battle  of  Salamis  and  the  defeat  which  the  Greek 
navies  had  inflicted  on  Xerxes  in  only  480  B.  C.,  there 
is  no  aesthetic  reason  why  a  modern  poet  should  not  dram- 
atize Armageddon  as  precipitately  as  Mr.  Stephen  Phillips. 
True  that  by  this  hasty  seizure  of  current  matter  the  poet 
loses  the  immense  co-operation  of  the  mytho-poetic  instinct 
which  shapes  and  selects  the  story,  and  of  time,  which 
invests  it  with  glamour.  But  the  Greeks  put  so  much  stress 

the  more  reason  why  the  Church  should  rally  to  the  higher  drama,  and 
even  throw  over  its  old-fashioned  notion  that  literature  and  Lent  are  in- 
compatible. For  if  there  are  plays  that  would  profane  Bank  Holiday,  there 
are  plays  that  would  hallow  Good  Friday— 'The  Passing  of  the  Third  Floor 
Back'  or  'The  Showing  Up  of  Blanco  Posnet,'  for  example. 

"But  if  the  dramatist  and  his  work  are  left  temporarily  or  totally  out- 
side the  Church  consciousness,  in  what  case  is  the  Church  itself?  Why, 
according  to  the  Times  advertisement  of  the  Scripture  Readers'  Association, 
and  the  authority  of  Sir  Charles  Booth,  'the  great  masses  of  the  people 
remain  apart  from  all  forms  of  religious  communion.'  Thus  the  total  ab- 
stainers from  the  Theatre  are  paralleled  and  even  outnumbered  by  the 
total  abstainers  from  the  Church.  For  the  majority  of  the  nation,  then, 
there  is  neither  Theatre  nor  Church.  No  wonder  it  is  an  age  of  joy-rides. 
Might  not  the  two  boycotted  institutions  be  wise  to  join  forces?" 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  185 

upon  this  factor  that  they  never  treated  an  original  theme 
at  all — the  daring  of  Agathon,  the  contemporary  of  Eurip- 
ides, in  inventing  the  plot  of  "The  Flower,"  finding  no 
imitators.  The  moderns  who  have  thrown  over  the  ancients 
by  inventing  their  own  themes  might  also  succeed  in  hand- 
ling their  own  times.  It  is  all  a  question  of  the  existence  of 
the  poets.  Wordsworth  told  Charles  Lamb  he  could  have 
written  Shakespeare,  if  he  had  had  a  mind,  and  Lamb  re- 
torted it  was  precisely  the  mind  that  was  lacking.  Granted 
the  poets,  I  see  no  inherent  reason  why  the  raw  stuff  of 
to-day  should  not  be  transfigured  into  tragic  poetry  in 
"the  grand  style."  The  war  certainly,  as  M.  Giraud  says, 
offers  us  matter  enough.  Nor  is  it  wanting  in  suggestions 
of  manner. 

VI 

For  the  man  in  the  street  the  grand  tragedy  of  the  war 
was  to  be  the  fate  of  the  Kaiser,  passing  in  punishment  for 
his  hubris  from  the  apex  of  an  Empire  to  St.  Helena,  or 
Devil's  Island,  or  a  cage,  or  even,  according  to  Punch,  a 
gibbet.  This  concept  of  tragedy  by  "decline  and  fall"  is 
the  conventional  one.  It  is  the  tragedy  of  Agamemnon  in 
^Eschylus,  of  Wolsey  and  Richard  II  in  Shakespeare. 

"  For  God's  sake,  let  us  sit  upon  the  ground 
And  tell  sad  stories  of  the  death  of  kings." 

But  who  cannot  see  that  this  isolation  of  an  individual 
is  utterly  disproportionate  to  the  gigantic  scale  and  issues 
of  the  war?  Already,  in  fact,  the  Kaiser  has  receded  to  the 
background  even  in  Germany,  where  von  Hindenburg  and 
three  or  four  others  take  precedence  in  the  popular  imagina- 
tion. The  fall  of  the  Kaiser  would  be  almost  anecdotal  in 
relation  to  the  real  theme  of  the  world-tragedy. 
The  young  German  students  who  in  defence  of  their 


1 86  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

State-concept  advanced  in  close  formation  under  a  hellish 
British  fire,  singing  Die  Wacht  am  Rhein,  saw  themselves 
fighting  for  a  modern  Athens,  menaced  by  all  the  world's 
devils  and  by  barbarians  of  every  hue.  To  the  flower  of 
England  fresh  from  the  public  schools,  who  freely  and  in  the 
cause  of  freedom  had  thrown  up  their  careers  with  a  gallant 
gesture,  it  was  those  very  students  who  were  barbarians 
and  devils.  Here  is  the  true  tragedy  of  the  war,  here  the 
core  of  its  pathos.  "For  the  masses,"  writes  a  Times 
correspondent,  "it  is  a  purely  defensive  war  brought  about 
by  a  wanton  attack  of  jealous  foes  upon  the  most  peaceful 
country  in  the  world."  He  happens  to  be  writing  of  Ger- 
many, but  the  description  will  fit  any  of  the  many  bel- 
ligerents. "The  people  are  inspired  by  faith  that  their 
cause  is  absolutely  justified.  They  take  their  losses  as  a 
kind  of  religious  sacrifice."  There  lies  the  spiritual  tragedy 
of  our  mutual  murderings.  For  tragedy,  as  Hegel  pointed 
out,  may  be  a  clash  not  of  good  and  evil,  of  right  and  wrong, 
but  of  two  goods  or  two  rights.  And  even  if  one  of  these  is 
less  good  or  less  right  objectively — and  we  know  from 
Bismarck  how  public  opinion  is  manufactured  in  Press 
Bureaus  and  other  laboratories — yet  if  to  the  protagonists 
themselves  their  ideal  seems  good  or  right,  if  they  are  alike 
in  at  least  willing  the  highest,  then  the  fact  that  one  is  more 
or  less  mistaken  does  not  lessen  the  pity  and  terror  of  the 
crash  when  these  opposed  wills  collide. 

And  the  tragedy  is  one  not  only  of  ideals,  but  of  these 
incarnated  in  masses,  not  in  individuals.  Were  we  content 
to  concentrate  upon  individuals  we  could  find  as  great  a 
subject  of  tragic  irony  in  our  guiltless  Lloyd  George  as  in 
the  guilty  Kaiser.  The  hated  apostle  of  peace  and  social 
reform  turned  into  the  idolized  Minister  of  Munitions! 
Munitions  which  are  not  only  non-productive  negatively 
but  destructive  positively!  The  savings  and  social  hopes 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  187 

of  generations  past  and  to  come  swallowed  up  in  and  by 
shells! 

But  Lloyd  George  would  not,  like  the  Kaiser,  be  the 
centre  of  a  personal  tragedy.  He  would  be  only  a  symbol — 
like  the  reported  conversion  of  a  rectory  into  a  shell-factory 
— of  the  bankruptcy  of  civilization,  Christianity,  and  social 
reform,  in  a  world  that  the  Victorian  prophets  saw  moving 
majestically  towards — 

"  One  far-off  divine  event." 

Socialists  would  place  the  tragedy  in  the  breakdown  of  the 
growing  international  brotherhood,  and  the  collapse  of 
internationalism  is  certainly  one  of  its  elements,  whether  the 
nationalism  of  the  belligerents  is  contrasted  with  conscious 
Socialism  or  with  the  unconscious  communism  of  commer- 
cial exchange  and  cosmopolitan  capital.  Moreover  the 
newer  nations — the  United  States,  Canada,  Australia, 
the  Argentine,  had  been  recruiting  their  population  upon 
an  industrial  and  not  upon  an  ethnic  basis,  and  this  reaction 
to  a  bristling  nationalism  cuts  across  all  the  latest  tenden- 
cies of  the  steam  and  electric  age  of  civilization. 

VII 

In  a  symbolic  drama  lies,  therefore,  one  possible  develop- 
ment of  a  modern  tragedy:  in  the  presentation  of  clashing 
world-currents  through  figures  incarnating  the  opposed  ten- 
dencies. But  these  figures  must  stake  their  all  upon  the 
issue.  Like  Kruger,  who  stood  for  nationalism,  like  Cobden, 
who  stood  for  internationalism,  they  must  be  carved  in 
granite.  They  cannot  turn  lightly  from  peace  to  war, 
from  militarism  to  pacifism,  from  faith  to  unfaith.  That 
way  lies  comedy.  When  I  saw  Kruger  in  his  exile,  standing 
before  his  great  Dutch  Bible,  I  realized  that  his  tragedy 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

ray"  ess  in  his  fall  than  in  the  clash  of  his  nai've  belief  with 
the  bigger  battalions  on  whose  side  Providence  had  ranged 
itself.  The  dramatist,  though  he  may  use  his  figures  as 
symbols  and  thus  infuse  his  drama  with  a  significance 
lacking  to  the  suffering  of  individuals,  must  never  forget 
that  art  deals  with  individuals  and  not  with  "isms."  It  is 
not  in  the  collapse  of  internationalism  or  Socialism,  of  the 
Transvaal  or  Belgium,  that  poetic  tragedy  lies,  but  in  the 
reflection  of  these  events  in  the  souls  of  the  protagonists. 

In  the  Mass-Drama — another  modern  potentiality  ex- 
ploited by  Hauptmann  in  "The  Weavers'7  and  less  purely 
by  Hardy  in  "The  Dynasts,"  that  gigantic  canvas  more 
populated  than  Tintoretto's  Paradise — no  one  individual 
summarizes  the  suffering.  Hauptmann's  hero  is  the  crowd, 
and  so  is  Hardy's  despite  that  Napoleon  occupies  the  fore- 
ground. Yet  it  is  always  through  the  individual  soul 
that  the  great  tragic  forces  are  seen  passing,  refracted  ac- 
cording to  the  nature  of  each. 

VIII 

Tragedy,  interpreted  as  the  clash  of  forces,  and  with  the 
symbolization  of  these  forces  by  individuals,  or  by  masses 
seen  through  individuals,  is  thus  our  modern  form  of  the 
higher  drama.  Mr.  Galsworthy's  "Strife,"  which  is  an 
exact  exemplification  of  this  formula  of  the  clash,  carries 
it  in  its  very  title.  The  "Armageddon"  of  Mr.  Stephen 
Phillips,  though  its  matter  is  burningly  topical,  is  not  a 
modern  drama  at  all,  and  its  supernatural  stage  machinery, 
its  resuscitation  of  Beelzebub  and  Belial,  is  still  more  ob- 
solete. Even  Mr.  Hardy,  whose  vision  is  so  fresh  and  fear- 
less, has  environed  his  great  epic-drama  with  the  "Over- 
world,"  and  created  a  series  of  "Phantom  Intelligences"- 
Spirits  and  Choruses  of  Pity  and  Rumor,  Spirits  Sinister 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  189 

and  Ironic,  not  to  mention  the  Shade  of  the  Earth.  It 
looks  as  if  the  poets  felt  instinctively  the  need  of  that 
deeper  background  of  which  Maeterlinck  speaks,  as  if 
without  some  equivalent  of  it  they  cannot  respond  to  M. 
Victor  Giraud's  demand  for  a  drama  that  shall  be  to  us 
what  the  classic  drama  was  to  our  forefathers.  Most  of  all 
do  they  seem  to  need  a  direct  medium  for  that "  criticism  of 
life"  which,  pace  Matthew  Arnold,  is  far  more  the  drama's 
function  than  that  of  poetry  in  general.  Yet,  as  a  device 
for  a  running  commentary  upon  the  action,  Mr.  Hardy's 
neomythic  figures  are  not  markedly  superior  to  the  Greek 
Chorus,  while,  as  a  substitute  for  the  old  supernatural  back- 
ground, they  have  the  fatal  defect  of  unreality.  Mr.  Hardy 
himself  admits  their  insubstantiality  without  apparently 
understanding  its  cause.  That  lies  in  the  fact  that  all  the 
figures  of  traditional  myth,  from  the  talking  serpent  of 
Eden  to  those  old  German  gods  whom  it  is  now  sought  to 
galvanize,  had  their  day  of  belief,  when  they  were  felt  as 
matter-of-fact  as  men  and  horses,  and  the  aura  of  their 
ancient  reality  still  lingers  and  vibrates  about  them.  Of  the 
Seraphs  and  the  Cherubim  the  Hebrew  liturgy  even  records 
the  exact  measurements  from  toe  to  wing-tip,  and  that  the 
angel  has  still  a  living  appeal  is  shown  by  the  legend  of  the 
angels  that  appeared  at  Mons  on  the  side  of  the  British. 
But  Mr.  Hardy — as  Charles  Lamb  said  of  much  smaller 
writers — for  the  supernatural  gives  us  the  non-natural. 

IX 

Far  more  serious  a  contribution  to  the  modern  drama  is 
Mr.  Hardy's  atmosphere  of  Fate.  As  given  upon  our  stage 
by  Mr.  Granville  Barker,  "The  Dynasts"  was  strangely 
debased  into  a  British  war-play  with  a  patriotic  tag,  but 
it  is  in  truth  the  spacious  utterance  of  an  agnostic  Spinoza. 


1 90  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

These  swarms  of  figures  from  Napoleon  to  the  smallest 
drummer-boy,  from  the  beacon-watchers  in  Wessex  to  the 
candle-snuffers  in  the  House  of  Commons,  from  empresses 
and  arch-duchesses  to  trulls  and  market-women,  are  all 
exhibited  as  caught  in  the  wave  of  a  common  destiny.  The 
immanent  World-Spirit — itself  perhaps  ironically  uncon- 
scious— is  seen  animating  the  entire  spectacle  as  an  organic 
whole.  We  behold  "as  it  were,  the  interior  of  a  brain 
which  seems  to  manifest  the  volitions  of  a  Universal  Will, 
of  whose  tissues  the  personages  of  the  action  form  portion." 
The  puppets,  in  short,  dance  and  ironic  spirits  bid  us 

"  Mark  the  twitchings  of  this  Bonaparte 
As  he  with  other  figures  foots  his  reel." 

And  one  must  confess  that  the  world-war  seems  to  afford 
an  uncomfortable  confirmation  of  Hardy's  dramatic  method. 
Here  is  an  immense  net  in  which  all  the  nations  have 
tangled  themselves,  though  at  the  moment  of  the  outbreak 
of  war  probably  not  a  soul  in  the  world  wanted  it,  for  even 
the  Prussian  militarists  must  have  wished  to  draw  back 
when  they  knew  England  was  coming  in.  The  frantic 
struggles  of  the  diplomatists  to  break  through  their  own  coils 
were  only  equalled  by  the  desperate  efforts  of  Emperors. 
Read  the  last  wild  telegrams  exchanged  at  dead  of  night 
between  Tsar  and  Kaiser,  between  Emperor  and  King. 
These  mightiest  of  mankind,  who  bestride  the  planet  like 
Colossi  and  command  the  homage  of  half  the  human  race, 
show  as  straws  in  a  maelstrom.  It  might  well  seem  as  if — 
in  Hardy's  words: 

"  Ere  systemed  stars  were  globed  and  lit 
The  slaughters  of  the  race  were  writ, 
And  wasting  wars,  by  land  and  sea, 
Fixed,  like  all  else,  immutably! " 

And  the  effort  to  end  the  war  seems  as  beyond  individual 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  IQI 

volition  as  the  effort  to  avert  it.  An  immense  force,  clearly 
made  up  of  individual  minds,  yet  gigantic  and  impersonal, 
urges  forward  the  combat,  denies  retreat. 

"  A  will  that  wills  above  the  will  of  each, 
Yet  but  the  will  of  all  conjunctively." 

It  is  a  public  opinion  of  which  the  largest  constituent 
is  fear  of  public  opinion.  We  are  all  caught  in  the  panic  of  a 
stampeding  mob.  Nobody  wishes  to  push  or  be  pushed, 
nobody  knows  why  everybody  is  pushing,  yet  we  are  all 
pushed  and  push  to  our  mutual  destruction. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  precisely  because  of  its  all-enveloping 
fatalism  that  "The  Dynasts"  cannot  become  a  model  for 
the  modern  dramatist. 


Hardy  himself  seems  to  have  felt  that  the  drawback  of 
"The  Dynasts"  lay  in  its  impracticability  on  the  stage. 
When  he  finished  it  he  felt  like  sending  it  to  the  managers — 
so  he  once  told  me — with  a  "Play  that  if  you  can!"  And, 
indeed,  so  cosmic  a  spectacle — some  episodes  of  which 
were  to  be  viewed  from  standpoints  in  the  stellar  system — 
might  well  have  seemed  adapted  only  to  an  audience  of 
archangels.  But  nowadays  aviators  might  almost  supply 
the  audience,  and  films  taken  by  them,  might  almost  pass 
on  their  visions  to  the  patrons  of  the  cinematograph,  which 
could  in  any  case  render  the  big  battle-pieces.  No,  the 
real  objection  to  "The  Dynasts"  is  that  it  is  a  puppet- 
play. 

In  the  Greek  dramas  Fate — at  best  an  uncertain  and 
wavering  conception — was  limited  to  a  family,  a  dynasty; 
it  was  the  nemesis  of  insolence,  it  was  Ate  visiting  the  sins 
of  the  fathers  on  the  children.  In  Ibsen's  "Ghosts,"  Ate 


I Q2  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

took  the  modern  shape  of  heredity,  and  was  the  nemesis 
for  vice.  But  in  Hardy  the  fog  of  Fate  swathes  and  muffles 
and  equalizes  everything.  If  Fate  is  to  play  a  part  in  mod- 
ern drama,  it  will  be  at  most  the  Fate  suggested  in  Maeter- 
linck's "Hour  of  Destiny."  Here  we  have  an  evil  Fate — 
a  planetary  will,  or  ill-will,  making  for  the  iron  hegemony 
of  Germany,  yet  avertible  by  a  gigantic  effort  of  the  rest 
of  the  world.  That  is  a  conception  not  free  from  confusion, 
for  what  is  avertible  is  not  the  will  of  the  planet,  but  at 
most  only  a  planetary  tendency  capable  of  being  counter- 
acted by  another  planetary  tendency — with  which  we 
may  range  ourselves!  This  sense  of  freedom  to  fight  Fate 
is  not  to  be  found  in  the  brooding  Belgian  poet,  but  the 
outraged  Belgian  patriot  feels  it  in  his  blood  and  bones, 
and  even  Hardy  turned  from  an  agnostic  philosopher  into 
a  Wessex  yeoman  when  at  the  call  of  the  blood  he  affixed 
a  doggerel  tag  to  the  stage  representation  of  his  fatalistic 
drama,  some  words  like 

"The  images  of  old  heroic  wars 
May  spur  to  emulate  our  ancestors." 

Philosophy,  we  perceive,  breaks  down  in  the  stress  of  ac- 
tion, and  it  is  no  true  philosophy  that  would  build  a  drama 
on  a  basis  which  dramatists  themselves,  put  to  the  test, 
are  the  first  to  abandon. 

XI 

But  whether  it  is  the  business  of  the  dramatist  to  indi- 
cate his  own  " planetary  tendency"  is  a  moot  point.  Ac- 
cording to  Bradley,  he  should,  and  our  British  thinker  finds 
fault  with  Hegel  for  ignoring  that  one  of  the  colliding  forces 
that  make  drama  may  be  evil.  No  fault  can  be  found  with 
Stephen  Phillips  on  this  score,  for  his  Kaiser  is  merely 
Attila  reanimated  by  Satan.  This  is  a  sufficient  warning 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  DRAMA  193 

against  writing  topical  drama  before  Time,  which  tries 
all,  has  sifted  things  unmistakably.  The  spirit  is  like  to 
be  as  partisan  as  the  matter  is  raw. 

The  dynamic  drama  has,  indeed,  its  place.  The  dram- 
atist— like  Brieux  in  some  of  his  plays — may  seek  to  en- 
force a  point  of  view.  But  the  dynamic  drama,  like  the 
topical,  has  its  risks.  Like  the  political  pamphlet,  it  is 
apt  to  become  obsolete  by  its  own  success  or  its  own  failure, 
and  to  turn  into  a  platitude  or  an  absurdity.  The  poet  is 
safest  in  limiting  himself  to  the  clash  of  forces.  For  life 
offers  enough  of  beauty  and  pity  and  terror  to  build  the 
highest  art,  and  these  abide  eternally,  and  appeal  afresh 
and  under  constantly  changing  aspects  to  every  fresh 
generation. 

To  the  apostles  of  causes  this  lack  of  the  didactic  will 
appear  as  a  grave  defect,  but  if  the  poet  has  written 
greatly,  he  cannot  avoid  teaching.  "  Prudens  quaestio  dimi- 
dium  responsionis."  A  wise  question  is  half  the  answer, 
said  Bacon  in  one  of  his  profoundest  sentences.  And  the 
artist's  exposition  of  colliding  forces  cannot  fail  to  throw 
light  upon  the  rights  and  the  wrongs  thereof. 

Since  these  colliding  forces  run  through  creation — war 
proper  being  only  what  Bacon  calls  an  "ostensive  in- 
stance"— it  follows  that  the  drama,  whose  life  is  clash,  is 
the  truest  of  all  literary  forms.  "All  things  run,"  said 
Heraclitus.  He  should  have  said  that  they  run  into  one 
another.  Nothing  exists  but  by  clashing  against  some- 
thing else,  which  by  limiting  it  also  defines  it,  just  as  the 
sea  and  the  land — "commensurate  antagonists"  Elia 
finely  calls  them — perpetually  bound  and  fashion  each 
other.  Tragedy  is  thus  no  external  accident  but  the  very 
root  of  reality 

"  For  tragic  life  God  wot, 
No  villain  need  be, 


IQ4  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

says  Meredith.    But  it  is  not  only  by  what  is  false  within 
that "  we  are  betrayed."    Tragedy  is  of  the  texture  of  things. 

"  Sunt  lachrymae  rerum." 

Superfluous,  therefore,  to  revive  Beelzebub  or  Belial 
or  to  hatch  new-fangled  Spirits  of  Irony  and  Pity,  when 
life  itself  offers  every  element  of  pathos  and  mystery,  of 
horror  and  devilry,  that  poetic  dignity  demands.  Out  of 
the  clash  and  conflict  of  the  forces  of  life  the  modern  dram- 
atist may  build  a  tragedy  as  noble  and  unadorned  as  a 
Doric  temple  rising  'twixt  sea  and  sky  on  its  rocky  head- 
land. 


THE  TWO  EMPIRES 

(For  the  Tercentenary  Book  of  Homage) 

"  If  e'er  I  doubt  of  England,  I  recall 

Gentle  Will  Shakespeare,  her  authentic  son, 
Wombed  in  her  soul  and  with  her  meadows  one, 
Whose  tears  and  laughter  hold  the  world  in  thrall, 
Impartial  bard  of  Briton,  Roman,  Gaul, 
Jew,  Gentile,  white  or  black.    Greek  poets  shun 
Strange  realms  of  song — his  ventures  overrun 
The  globe,  his  sovereign  art  embraces  all. 

Such,  too,  is  England's  Empire — hers  the  art 
To  hold  all  faiths  and  races  'neath  her  sway, 

An  art  wherein  love  plays  the  better  part. 
Thus  comes  it,  all  beside  her  fight  and  pray, 

While,  like  twin  sons  of  that  same  mighty  heart, 
St.  George  and  Shakespeare  share  one  April  day." 


THE  LEVITY  OF  WAR-POLITICS 

"I  can  just  remember,  though  I  was  then  a  child,  the  controversy 
with  the  United  States  over  Oregon  which  brought  both  countries 
to  the  verge  of  a  conflict.  In  that  case  a  vast  and  fertile  territory 
was  in  dispute,  a  territory  worth  fighting  for,  so  far  as  its  value  went. 
Yet  who  has  ever  doubted,  when  once  the  excitement  had  passed 
away,  that  it  would  have  been  a  frightful  misfortune  for  both  nations 
had  they  fought  for  it?  Since  then,  how  many  war  panics  have  we 
not  seen  in  England?  At  one  time  men  talked  of  war  with  France  as 
inevitable;  and  within  the  last  ten  years  there  were  many  who  set  up 
Russia  as  the  enemy  with  whom  there  could  be  no  settled  peace  till 
there  had  first  been  a  war.  Now,  by  the  exercise  of  a  little  good  sense 
and  good  temper  on  both  sides,  we  have  established  friendly  relations 
with  both  these  countries.  Why  not  with  all  countries?" — LORD 
BRYCE  in  War  and  Peace,  January,  1914. 

"  Wait  and  see." — MR.  ASQUITH. 


Speaking  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  26th  January, 
1916,  Sir  Edward  Grey  described  the  most  gigantic  calamity 
that  has  ever  befallen  the  human  race  as  "a  war  forced 
upon  Europe  after  every  effort  had  been  made  to  find  a 
settlement  without  war,  which  could  easily  have  been  found" 
That  cheers,  and  not  hisses,  followed  this  tremendous 
statement,  means,  I  suppose,  that  it  was  taken  as  an  im- 
peachment of  Germany  for  refusing  the  arbitrament  of 
reason,  whether  in  the  shape  of  the  Conference  proposed 
by  the  speaker  or  the  reference  to  the  Hague  Tribunal 
suggested  by  Serbia  and  the  Tsar.  But  if  Germany  re- 
fused the  settlement  that  could  so  "  easily  have  been  found," 
she  must  either  have  done  so  because  the  diplomatists 

196 


THE   LEVITY  OF  WAR-POLITICS  1 97 

bungled  their  job — in  which  appalling  alternative  Sir 
Edward  Grey  may  have  contributed  to  the  bungle — or 
because  (as  in  1870)  she  desired  and  preferred  that  arbitra- 
ment of  the  sword  which  even  the  Hague  Conference  left 
open  to  independent  States — in  which  case  a  settlement 
could  not  " easily  have  been  found"  and  Sir  Edward  Grey 
was  talking  nonsense. 

An  examination  of  the  facts  makes  it  probable  that  the 
first  alternative  is  the  correct  one,  and  if  it  be  indeed  true 
that  the  diplomatists  bungled  their  job,  what  is  to  be 
said  of  the  monstrous  levity  with  which  mankind  placed 
its  fortunes  in  their  hands?  If  States  and  their  popula- 
tions have  ceased  to  be  estates  passing  with  their  tenantry 
from  sovereign  to  sovereign  by  dower,  the  peoples  of  Europe 
are  still  puppets  worked  by  the  makers  of  their  Foreign 
Policy.  So  far  as  England  is  concerned,  its  diplomatic 
representatives  are  notorious  for  knowledge  of  languages 
psychology  or  even  foreign  politics.  Of  the  hundred  and 
twenty,  big  and  little,  who  "lie  abroad  for  their  country's 
good,"  few  have  any  experience  of  the  land  of  their  abode, 
and  the  Consuls  who  do  have  experience  can  hardly  ever 
rise  to  diplomatic  rank.  Diplomatic  talent  is  understood 
to  be  limited  to  young  gentlemen  with  not  less  than  four 
hundred  a  year.  Sir  Edward  Pears  tells  us  that  in  the 
fateful  months  preceding  the  entry  of  Turkey  into  the  war, 
neither  our  Ambassador  at  the  Porte  nor  his  main  secre- 
taries could  speak  Turkish!  That  the  Ambassadors, 
though  the  chartered  spies  of  the  nations,  did  not  perceive 
the  war  coming,  is  thus  not  calculated  to  surprise  us. 
One  of  them — a  representative  of  the  Entente  Powers  at 
Berlin — gravely  told  the  interviewer  of  Der  Tag  that  the 
grouping  of  the  Powers  in  the  European  Balance  was  the 
surest  safeguard  of  peace.  The  date  of  this  Solomonic 
utterance  was  May,  1914.  And  our  Ministers — our  hired 


198  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

watchmen — were  equally  myopic.  Speaking  at  the  festive 
board  of  the  Mansion  House  to  the  bankers  and  merchants 
of  the  City  of  London,  Mr.  Lloyd  George — in  the  prehis- 
toric times  when  he  was  Chancellor  of  the  Exchequer — 
said  that  if  there  was  civil  war  in  Ireland,  complicated 
with  industrial  trouble,  the  situation  would  be  "of  the 
gravest  with  which  any  Government  in  this  country  has 
had  to  deal  for  centuries."  This  was  said  July  lyth,  1914. 
And  the  same  blindness  appears  in  the  Austrian  Cabinet 
Ministers,  all  of  whom  had  given  their  names  in  support 
of  the  Twenty-First  World  Peace  Congress  that  was  to 
have  been  held  on  September  i5th  to  i9th,  1914,  in  the 
Parliamentary  Buildings  at  Vienna.  Well  might  the 
philosopher  bid  his  son  observe  with  how  little  wisdom  the 
world  is  governed. 

II 

"Every  effort  had  been  made  to  find  a  settlement  with- 
out war!"  Sir  Edward  Grey  spoke  truly.  Not  only  did 
he  toil  like  a  galley-slave  in  the  last  desperate  days  of 
Peace  but  he  had  just  concluded  a  settlement  with  Ger- 
many over  a  number  of  Colonial  danger-points.  Unless 
Germany,  therefore,  absolutely  meant  war  at  any  price, 
he  was  in  a  better  position  than  ever  to  keep  us  at  peace 
with  her.  Austria,  as  we  have  seen,  had  a  completely 
Pacificist  Cabinet.  Why  then  did  the  negotiations  fail? 
Light  is  thrown  upon  this  question  by  an  actual  member 
of  the  British  War-Cabinet.  In  an  article  published  in 
the  Daily  Chronicle  on  the  first  anniversary  of  the  war, 
Mr.  Masterman  has  given  us  an  historic  picture  of  the 
"company  of  tired  men"  sitting  in  almost  continuous 
session  during  twelve  hot  summer  days  and  nights,  con- 
scious that  the  whole  future  of  civilization  was  at  stake, 
and  surrounded  by  a  whirl  of  telegrams  from  every  capital 


THE    LEVITY   OF   WAR-POLITICS  1 99 

in  Europe,  to  which  Sir  Edward  Grey  kept  replying  by 
an  endlessly  changing  series  of  conciliatory  propositions, 
pleading  frenziedly  if  only  for  delay,  even  by  a  few  hours. 
Imagine  the  fate  of  the  world  hanging  on  the  tick  of  a 
clock,  on  the  frantic  telegraphing  of  a  "company  of  tired 
men"  who  had  even  forgotten — one  hears — that  the  dif- 
ference between  London  and  Berlin  time  would  make  the 
respite  even  shorter  than  it  seemed. 

Ill 

"In  the  changing  hours  of  that  terrific  strain,"  it  is  no 
wonder  that  Mr.  Masterman  could  not  understand  the 
"combination  of  truculence  and  contempt"  which  ran 
through  the  German  replies  to  Sir  Edward  Grey's  heroic 
efforts.  A  year  later,  with  his  brain  less  "tired,"  he  offers 
the  explanation  that  Germany  thought  Sir  Edward  was 
only  "bluffing."  The  War  Party  at  Vienna  and  Berlin 
started  with  the  firm  conviction  that  "England  would  not 
fight." 

There  lies  the  dog-— if  I  may  quote  a  German  proverb. 
Sir  Edward  Grey  could  not  get  himself  believed.  He  was 
the  voice  of  England  yet  he  could  not  get  her  voice  under- 
stood. If  that  is  not  to  fail  as  her  representative,  I  know 
not  what  failure  is.  And  the  incredulity  with  which  he 
was  met  when  he  did  menace  war  rested  on  his  prior  meek- 
nesses. He  had  been  a  Peace-at-any-price  man.  He  had 
let  the  Balkan  States  and  the  oppressed  minorities  of  the 
world  understand  that  their  sufferings  must  not  disturb 
the  repose  of  Europe.  Let  sleeping  dogs  lie,  even  if  they 
overlaid  infants.  Peace  was  the  supreme  good.  And, 
knowing  how  lightly  all  these  dogs  were  sleeping  and  how 
carefully  they  had  been  divided  into  rival  packs,  one  can 
understand  his  gingerly  footsteps.  But  when  at  last,  his 


200  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

sense  of  England's  honor  was  stirred  to  fighting-point,  and 
he  stamped  a  bold  foot,  no  Central-European  dog  cocked 
an  ear  or  stiffened  a  bristle.  Germany  did  not  believe 
England  would  fight,  attests  Baron  Beyens,  the  Belgian 
Minister  at  Berlin.1  If  the  boy  who  cried  "Wolf"  too 
often  was  not  believed  when  the  wolf  actually  appeared, 
the  same  fate  befell  the  wolf  who  had  always  gone  dressed 
as  a  lamb. 

Could  there  be  a  grimmer  irony?  Not  only  has  Sir 
Edward  Grey  always  failed  to  bluff  a  la  Palmerston,  he 
has  never  even  called  up  to  the  value  of  his  hand.  And 
when  he  at  last  does  call  up  to  its  value,  he  is  supposed  to 
be  bluffing! 

IV 

The  conclusion  is  inescapable  that  had  our  relations  with 
Russia  and  France  been  Alliances  instead  of  Ententes, — 
"understandings"  which  are  really  misunderstandings — 
had  they  been  public  politics  instead  of  secret  commitments 
or  obligations  of  honor,  Germany  would  never  have  risked 
"taking  on"  England  simultaneously  with  France  and 
Russia,  though  she  obviously  wanted  war  with  the  two 
latter. 

Up  to  the  eleventh  hour  France  herself,  nay,  England 
herself,  did  not  know  if  England  was  coming  in — witness 
President  Poincare's  appeal  to  King  George  on  July  3ist, 
1914 — how  much  less  then  could  Germany  know!  Sir 
Edward  Grey  remained  equivocal,  he  would  and  would 
not  send  support;  we  were  not  committed,  he  told  both 
France  and  our  House  of  Commons,  and  Lord  Cromer 
authenticates  his  accuracy.  "In  July,  1914,  the  Govern- 
ment of  this  country  was  wholly  free  from  any  engagement 
to  support  France  or  Russia  in  the  event  of  war."  It  was 

1  Germany  Before  the  War. 


THE   LEVITY   OF  WAR-POLITICS  2OI 

this  facing-both-ways  in  the  quest  for  Peace  that  finally 
broke  it. 

Thus,  it  was  not  "The  Balance  of  Power"  which  has 
failed  to  keep  the  peace  of  Europe,  it  was  the  uncertainty 
of  whether  the  equilibrating  Alliances  existed  or  not  on 
our  side.  We  had  their  entanglements  but  not  their  prophy- 
lactic profit. 

In  the  last  analysis,  the  blame  lies  less  on  the  unfortunate 
Foreign  Secretary  who  could  not  make  himself  understood 
in  German  than  on  the  system  which  combines  the  defects 
of  autocracy  with  the  drawbacks  of  democracy:  which 
gave  Sir  Edward  Grey  a  free  hand  to  undertake  obligations 
that  without  the  ratification  of  Parliament  he  could  not 
fulfil.  For  part  of  his  original  indecision  came  from  un- 
certainty as  to  the  attitude  of  the  Commons.1 

They  called  it  "continuity  of  Foreign  Policy" — this 
subtraction  of  the  power  of  treaty-making  from  Parlia- 
ment. Had  the  Inner  Cabinet  first  asked  Parliament 
what  Foreign  Policy  was  to  be  continuous,  we  should  all 
have  understood  our  responsibilities,  we  should  have  either 
made  a  peace  with  Germany  or  an  unequivocal  Alliance 
against  her,  and  if  we  thought  even  France,  Russia  and 
England  united  would  not  be  sufficient  to  keep  the  monster 
quiet,  we  should  all  have  endorsed  Lord  Roberts's  demand 
for  National  Service,  and  the  transition  to  a  more  or  less 
military  state  would  have  been  made  methodically  and  not 
enforced  in  a  panic  with  all  its  disorder  and  discontent. 

Leaving  the  Cabinet  in  the  midst  of  its  tragic  anxieties, 
Mr.  Masterman  one  day — he  tells  us — went  to  speak  at 
an  immense  provincial  meeting.  And  when  he  spoke  of  the 
possible  imminence  of  war,  half  the  audience  thought  he 

1  In  fairness  to  Sir  Edward  Grey  something  should  perhaps  be  allowed  for 
the  miscalculation  in  Germany  produced  by  the  vagaries  of  Sir  Edward 
Carson  and  the  Pankhursts,  and  by  the  industrial  unrest. 


202  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

was  insane,  and  half  that  he  was  trying  to  evade  the  topics 
that  really  mattered.  And  this  is  twentieth  century  de- 
mocracy! "Be  not  like  dumb  driven  cattle,"  said  Long- 
fellow. But  it  is  as  cattle  that  our  sons  and  our  brothers 
have  gone  to  the  shambles. 


Again  if  it  is  true  that  a  settlement  could  easily  have  been 
found  a  day  before  the  war,  why  cannot  it  as  easily  be  found 
a  day  after  the  war,  not  to  say  a  year  after?  Why  must  we 
gamble  with  the  lives  and  resources  of  generations  because 
forsooth  diplomatic  dignity  or  Machiavellian  prudence  re- 
quires that  neither  side  shall  make  a  move  towards  concilia- 
tion? As  if  it  were  all  a  gigantic  landslide  beyond  human 
interference !  Why  should  negotiations  be  broken  off  by  war 
instead  of  remaining  continuously  in  being,  the  rival  diplo- 
matists feeling  each  other's  pulse  day  by  day?  Crucified 
humanity  cries  out  against  such  cataclysmic  imbecility. 
Again,  if  a  settlement  could  easily  have  been  found,  it  can- 
not be  so  absolutely  necessary  that  "the  military  domina- 
tion of  Germany"  shall  be  "wholly  and  finally  destroyed." 
On  August  2d,  1914,  it  was,  accenting  to  Sir  Edward  Grey, 
quite  easy  to  live  in  Europe  with  Germany.  On  August 
4th  this  became  so  impossible  that  the  flower  of  England 
and  the  resources  of  generations  must  be  sacrificed  to  wipe 
out  Germany.  It  may  be  said  that  the  invasion  of  Belgium 
was  a  revelation:  it  was  no  revelation,  for  military  plans 
existed  against  the  contingency — as  against  every  other — 
and  it  had  been  threatened  by  German  fire-eaters  and  dis- 
cussed by  Mr.  Belloc  and  other  military  writers.  What  Ger- 
many was  we  already  knew  from  the  treatment  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  and  Prussian  Poland.  Yet  we  continued  to  live 
forty-four  years  in  the  same  world  with  her.  A  cat  has  even 


THE   LEVITY  OF   WAR-POLITICS  203 

lived  amicably  with  a  rat,  according  to  an  engaging  story  in 
the  Times.  A  Talmudical  parable  runs:  "You  and  I  can- 
not live  in  the  same  world,  said  God  to  the  haughty  man." 
But  England  is  not  God,  and  she  is  only  less  "haughty" 
than  Germany. 

One  can  understand  that  after  those  twelve  hot  tragic 
days,  and  that  apparent  "combination  of  truculence  and 
contempt"  in  face  of  all  the  tired  men's  efforts  for  peace, 
Mr.  Asquith's  irritated  brain  should  declare  that  we  would 
not  sheathe  the  sword  till  the  military  domination  of  Ger- 
many had  been  "wholly  and  finally"  destroyed.  But 
what  one  cannot  understand  is  the  levity  with  which  Mr. 
Asquith  repeats  the  exact  words  of  this  moment  of  brain- 
weariness  without  any  attempt  to  modify  their  "truculence 
and  contempt"  or  at  least  to  clarify  and  expand  them  into 
a  practical  political  proposition. 

I  would  respectfully  commend  to  Mr.  Asquith  the  pro- 
found warning  of  Burke  that  "firmness  is  then  only  a  virtue 
when  it  accompanies  the  most  perfect  wisdom"  and  that 
"inconstancy  is  a  sort  of  natural  corrective  of  human  in- 
firmity." 

VI 

"No  one  in  his  wildest  dreams,"  says  Mr.  Masterman, 
"would  have  imagined  a  year  ago  to-day"  that  we  should 
have  3,000,000  volunteers  or  raised  a  thousand  millions 
for  the  war,  etc.,  etc.  Mr.  Masterman  in  his  justifiable 
pride  as  a  Briton,  forgets  he  is  damning  himself  as  a  Cabinet 
Minister.  If  the  Cabinet  did  not  foresee  they  would  raise 
the  necessary  forces  and  finances,  how  dared  they  go  into  the 
war?  Bloch  had  explained  in  six  volumes  that  war  was  now 
an  affair  of  trenches,  yet  they — Mr.  Lloyd  George  unblush- 
ingly  confesses — had  not  foreseen  that  trench  warfare  and 
the  munitions  therefor  would  play  such  a  great  part.  More- 


204  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

over — in  view  of  this  very  European  war — he  and  his  col- 
leagues had  arranged  for  an  Expeditionary  Force  of  160,000 
men.  That  was  to  be  England's  military  contribution, 
for  she  was — they  said — a  naval  power.  Yet  within  a  year 
they  discovered  we  needed  to  send  not  160,000  men,  nor 
even  a  million  men,  but  every  available  Englishman,  even 
at  the  risk  of  shattering  the  proverbial  "palladium  of 
British  liberty."  Imagine  a  housekeeper  who,  charged  to  be 
always  prepared  for  a  dozen  guests  of  casual  advent,  is 
found,  when  the  long-expected  visitors  arrive  at  last  to  have 
laid  in  two  tomatoes  and  half-a-tin  of  condensed  soup! 

VII 

"I  don't  think  they  play  at  all  fairly,  and  they  all  quar- 
rel so  dreadfully  one  can't  hear  oneself  speak — and  they 
don't  seem  to  have  any  rules  in  particular,  at  least,  if  there 
are,  nobody  attends  to  them, — and  you've  no  idea  how 
confusing  it  is,  all  the  things  being  alive. "  So  said  Alice  in 
Wonderland  and  the  most  cursory  examination  of  history 
reveals  it  as  a  Wonderland  truly  Alician.  If  the  present 
war  was  due  to  the  ambiguity  attaching  to  Ententes,  the 
Crimean  war  was  due  to  the  ambiguity  of  a  Treaty.  Says 
Justin  McCarthy  in  his  History  of  Our  Own  Times  (Vol.  II, 
Cap.  25): 

"It  may  not  perhaps  give  an  uninitiated  reader  any  very 
exalted  opinion  of  the  utility  and  beauty  of  diplomatic  arrange- 
ments, to  hear  that  disputes  covering  more  than  a  century  of 
time,  and  causing  at  least  two  great  wars,  arose  out  of  the  im- 
possibility of  reconciling  two  different  interpretations  of  the 
meaning  of  two  or  three  lines  of  a  treaty." 

The  Franco-Prussian  war — the  prelude  to  the  present 
catastrophe — reveals  the  same  terrifying  flippancy;  high 


THE   LEVITY   OF   WAR-POLITICS  205 

politics  would  be  high  comedy  were  it  not  high  tragedy. 
Although  the  first  link  in  the  fatal  chain  was  forged  by 
Germany,  when  the  mulish  militarist  brain  of  Moltke  was 
allowed  to  override  the  sagacity  of  Bismarck,  and  Alsace- 
Lorraine  was  annexed,  yet  it  cannot  be  overlooked  that  it 
was  France  herself  that  loosed  the  thunderbolts  of  war. 
However  Bismarck  by  doctoring  the  Ems  telegram  may 
have  fooled  her,  yet  it  was  to  the  top  of  her  own  bent  that 
she  was  fooled,  and  had  there  been  no  French  fire-eaters 
and  no  Empress  eager  for  the  glory  of  her  son  and  her 
Church,  the  Franco-Prussian  war  would  never  have  been. 
To  quote  another  modern  historian: l 

"Whether  the  majority  of  the  Assembly  really  desired  war 
is  even  now  a  matter  of  doubt.  But  the  clamor  of  a  hundred 
madmen  within  its  walls,  the  ravings  of  journalists  and  incen- 
diaries, who  at  such  a  time  are  to  the  true  expression  of  public 
opinion  what  the  Spanish  inquisition  was  to  the  Christian  reli- 
gion, paralyzed  the  will  and  understanding  of  less  infatuated 


These  madmen,  as  it  turned  out,  ruined  first  their  own 
country  and  then  the  world.  Their  ardor  for  war  was  only 
equalled  by  their  unpreparedness  for  it,  and  France  was 
humbled  to  the  dust.  England  had  been  pro- German  but 
her  chivalrous  sympathy  with  the  hardly-entreated  loser 
might  have  turned  her  pro-French,  had  not  the  washing  of 
dirty  linen  after  the  war,  revealed  "a  private  engagement 
between  France  and  Prussia  which  would  have  allowed 
France  on  certain  conditions  to  annex  Belgium."  2  Alarmed 
and  angry,  England  pressed  upon  France  and  Prussia  a 
new  treaty  by  which  all  three  Powers  bound  themselves 
afresh  to  maintain  the  independence  of  Belgium.  But  this 

1  G.  A.  Fyffe,  History  of  Modern  Europe. 

2  Justin  McCarthy:  A  History  of  Our  Own  Times,  Vol.  IV. 


206  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

was  not  the  only  flouting  of  parchment,  for  Russia  had 
seized  the  opportunity  of  Prussia  and  France  being  at 
death-grips  to  disavow  the  Treaty  of  Paris  neutralizing  the 
Black  Sea,  and  Italy  profited  by  the  same  pre-occupation 
of  "The  Concert  of  Europe"  to  reoccupy  Rome.  No  won- 
der Gilbert  in  "The  Happy  Land"  made  Mr.  Ayrton  define 
a  treaty  as  "that  useful  instrument  which  enables  the  man 
of  honor  to  promise,  when  taken  at  a  disadvantage,  that 
which  (under  happier  circumstances)  he  has  not  the  re- 
motest intention  of  performing."  With  European  politics 
thus  proceeding  "on  the  bold  assumption  that  the  stronger 
has  always  a  right  to  do  anything  he  pleases  with  the 
weaker,"  l  or  on  the  well-known  formula  of  Wordsworth: 

"The  good  old  rule,  the  simple  plan 

That  they  may  take  who  have  the  power, 
And  they  may  keep  who  can," 

the  attempt  to  apply  suddenly  a  standard  of  "All  for  Law, 
or  the  World  Well  Lost,"  is  of  a  flippancy  almost  too  great 
even  for  politics. 

VIII 

This  "law  of  the  stronger'5  was  accepted  by  Europe  when 
it  allowed  Alsace-Lorraine  to  be  annexed  and  blood-and- 
iron to  be  established  as  the  ruling  principle.  The  sequel 
has  been  in  keeping.  Rape  was  followed  by  mesalliance, 
when  France,  re-estranged  from  England,  distraught  be- 
tween dreams  of  Revanche  and  nightmares  of  further 
disintegration  at  the  hands  of  the  Huns  threw  herself  into 
the  arms  of  Russia  and  her  savings  into  its  lap,  the  first 
civilization  in  the  world  thus  mismating  with  one  of  the 
most  backward.  "The  Rights  of  Man "  which  had  been  the 
gospel  and  glory  of  the  wile  lumiere  were  abandoned  with  a 
Austin  McCarthy:  A  History  of  Our  Own  Times,  Vol.  IV. 


THE   LEVITY   OF   WAR-POLITICS  207 

levity  worthy  of  a  Mexican  mob.  I  remember  the  days 
when  the  Franco-Russian  alliance  was  being  cemented,  the 
popularity  at  the  Paris  Foire  au  Pain  d'Epices  of  the  ginger- 
bread effigies  of  hand-shaking  French  and  Russian  sailors. 
In  the  very  quarter  of  the  Bastille  the  fickle  populace  had 
already  forgotten  Liberty:  throughout  France  the  peasants 
strangled  her  with  their  stockings. 

Nor  can  all  our  admiration  for  the  sublime  stand  France 
is  making  to-day — her  whole  population  knit  in  love  and 
sacrifice — blind  us  to  her  levity  in  not  bearing  sons  for  the 
day  of  battle.  By  an  infinitely  imprudent  prudence  and  a 
tragically  improvident  providence  she  reduced  her  families 
to  a  minumum  and  simultaneously  with  pining  for  Alsace- 
Lorraine  and  reaching  out  for  Morocco,  she  surrendered 
portions  of  her  own  beloved  soil  to  black  and  yellow  labor, 
importing  Africans  and  coolies  for  her  vineyards  and  coal- 
mines.1 

The  ominous  growth  of  the  German  navy  brought 
England  more  vaguely  into  the  same  grouping  and  ulti- 
mately into  battle-line  with  Russia,  her  bogey  of  the  last 
generation,  with  Serbia  from  which  she  had  only  recently 
withdrawn  her  minister,  Montenegro,  whose  war  habits, 
though  they  kindled  Tennyson,  have  chilled  Miss  Durham 
who  really  knows  them,  and  other  still  less  civilized  popula- 
tions. With  equal  levity  the  people  of  Goethe  and  Bee- 
thoven fraternized  with  the  illiterate  Turk,  the  people  of 
Luther  with  the  lethargic  Mussulman,  and  the  people  of 
Kant  with  the  assassins  of  Armenia.  Even  in  such  a  record 
of  levity  the  mutability  of  Italy  stands  pre-eminent. 

The  levity  hi  the  history  of  Belgium  belongs  rather  to 
the  Great  Powers  than  to  the  tiny  territory  that,  though 
neutralized,  was  allowed  to  have  an  army  and  even  to  go  on 
great  imperial  adventures,  denied  to  Germany.  To  domes- 

1  Times,  July  13,  1914. 


208  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

ticate  a  kitten  and  then  let  it  produce  a  brood  of  Congolese 
tiger-cats  seems  to  me  an  inconsequence  of  which  only 
politicians  are  capable.  The  Belgium  Minister  for  the 
Colonies  told  us  at  a  banquet  this  February  that  "Belgium 
without  the  Congo  was  unthinkable."  I  am  very  willing 
Belgium  shall  have  a  great  colonial  Empire — she  is  perhaps 
the  one  country  that  now  deserves  it,  and  whose  tribulations 
will  have  taught  her  sympathy  even  with  blacks.  But  my 
brain  is  quite  able  to  think  of  a  Belgium  without  the  Congo, 
and  quite  unable  to  think  of  a  Congo'd  Belgium  as  entitled 
to  a  protective  neutrality.  In  such  a  sphere  as  politics — 
where  "to  think  clear  and  to  see  straight"  is  impolitic — 
it  is  no  wonder  that  none  of  the  belligerent  populations  is 
able  to  bear  the  truth  about  its  own  military  and  naval 
operations,  and  that  the  word  "success"  must  accompany 
every  notification, — a  levity  that  does  not  shrink  even  from 

"SUCCESS  OF  OUR  RETREAT!" 

How  long  we  hid  from  ourselves  the  truth  about  the  Dar- 
danelles when,  in  the  words  of  Arnold  White,  "you  cannot 
pierce  the  earth  with  a  bayonet  in  any  square  yard  of  the 
beaches  of  Hellas  and  Suvla  Bay  without  touching  the 
corpse  of  a  British,  an  Australian  or  an  Indian  soldier!" 
This  monumental  example  of  levity  in  military  operations 
was  probably  mainly  due  to  neglect  of  Lord  Salisbury's 
famous  advice  to  "get  large  maps."  We  were  only  a  few 
miles  from  an  historic  capital.  Looking  round  the  world  for 
some  comforting  instance  of  absence  of  levity,  I  can  only 
find  it  in  the  warnings  of  those  German  Socialists  who  op- 
posed the  annexation  of  Alsace-Lorraine  as  holding  the 
seeds  of  future  war,  and  in  the  Social  Democratic  Group 
in  the  Alsace-Lorraine  Assembly,  who  eighteen  months  be- 
fore this  war,  issued  a  manifesto  appealing  for  a  loyal 
understanding  between  France  and  Germany,  as  even  to  be 


THE   LEVITY   OF   WAR-POLITICS  2OQ 

re-annexed  to  France,  they  could  not  contemplate  "another 
war  which  would  surpass  in  horror  all  that  the  human  brain 
can  imagine." 

IX 

On  July  17,  1914,  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  addressing  the 
bankers  and  merchants  of  the  City  of  London  at  the  Man- 
sion House  dinner  already  mentioned,  said : 

"It  is  sad  that  so  much  of  the  capital  of  the  world  should 
be  wasted  in  wars  and  preparations  for  wars.  During  the  last 
ten  years  alone  the  nations  of  the  world  have  spent  4,500  mil- 
lions in  war  and  preparations  for  war — 1,000  millions  more 
than  Britain  has  advanced  in  fifty  years  to  civilize  the  world." 

Not  three  weeks  later  he  had  consented  to  a  war  which  now 
costs  us  five  millions  a  day,  and  the  total  cost  of  which  for 
the  Allies  is  some  twelve  millions  a  day,  the  very  sum  which 
paid  his  vaunted  old  age  pensions  for  a  year.  Well  might 
Lord  Sumner  say  that  "if  the  House  of  Lords  and  the 
House  of  Commons  could  be  thrown  into  a  volcano  every 
day  the  loss  represented  would  be  less  than  the  daily  cost 
of  the  campaign."  The  expression  was  unfortunate,  since 
our  sense  of  loss  in  such  a  contingency,  is  not  acute,  but 
the  image  is  vivid.  And  to  think  that  John  Bright  once 
fulminated  because  the  annual  expenditure  on  our  Army 
and  Navy  was  £26,000,000.  It  has  been  calculated  that 
should  the  war  last  another  year,  the  total  cost  to  the  Allies 
would  be  £8,600,000,000.  Mr.  Arthur  Kiddy,  City  Editor 
of  the  Morning  Post,  estimated  the  total  expense  for  all  the 
belligerents  at  £12,000,000,000  of  which  rather  more  than 
£3,000,000,000  would  fall  upon  England.1  Such  astronomi- 

1  "The  cost  of  no  war  has  even  approximated  to  the  cost  of  the  present  war. 
The  largest  amount  spent  by  Great  Britain  on  war  in  a  single  year  before 
the  present  war  was  £71,000,000.  The  Revolutionary  and  Napoleonic  War 
cost  in  the  aggregate  £831,000,000;  that  war  was  spread  over  twenty  years 


210  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

cal  figures  are  perhaps  the  cause  of  the  levity  with  which 
we  dispense  them.  They  mean  no  more  to  us  than  the 
distances  of  the  Milky  Way.  But  even  these  figures  are 
too  small,  for  they  do  not  allow  for  the  fact  that  the  ex- 
penditure is  destructive  and  each  pound  destroys — it  has 
been  estimated — ten  shillings.  Dr.  Anna  S.  Shaw  in  her 
fascinating  autobiography  relates  how  when  a  child  of  four 
she  visited  Speke  Island  off  Queenstown  and  watched  the 
convicts,  whose  "hard  labor"  was  to  carry  buckets  of  water 
from  one  shore  to  the  other — and  empty  them  into  the  sea. 
But  war-labor  is  even  more  wasteful  for  it  does  not  merely 
dissipate  present  labor,  it  destroys  past  labor  too.  It  has 
even  been  said  that  every  pound  spent  on  the  war  destroys 
another  ten  shillings.  Not  to  mention  the  cost  of  that 
cheapest  of  commodities,  human  life. 

"  Levitas,  levitas,  omnia  levitas!  " 

The  Crimean  War  cost  £67,500,000;  that  was  spread  over  three  financial 
years.  The  Boer  War  cost  £21 1,000,000;  that  was  spread  over  four  financial 
years."  Interview  with  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  Pearson's  Mazagine,  March, 


THE  PLACE  OF  PEACE 

"  So  came  I  to  a  scene  of  Witches'  Sabbath, 
Ear-cracking  cannon-claps  made  devils'-thunder, 
Mixed  with  the  hiss  and  flare  of  foul  explosives 
And  screams  of  disembowelled  men  and  horses. 
Green  o'er  the  soil  a  ghastly  vapor  glided, 
In  heaven,  roaring,  hung  death-raining  navies, 
Rocks  burst  into  eye-gouging  chips  of  granite, 
The  waters  spouted  up  in  boiling  pillars, 
Death  boomed  at  once  from  earth  and  sky  and  ocean, 
And  men  of  every  race,  black,  white  or  yellow, 
At  death-grips,  clawed  and  stabbed  and  bit  and  throttled. 
Miasma-breeding,  lay  unburied  corpses, 
Envied  of  youths  gangrened  and  semi-frozen. 
Leviathans  ten  thousand  shipwrights  toiled  at, 
With  freights,  the  harvest  of  a  world  of  workers, 
Were  gulped  like  paper-boats,  and  as  an  infant 
Rubs  figures  from  its  slate,  the  painful  garner 
Of  generations — cities,  railways,  harbors — 
And  carven  treasure  of  the  Middle  Ages 
Were  childishly  expunged.    I  saw  around  me — 
Looming  incarnadined,  phantasmagoric — 
Millions  of  torsos,  eyeless,  noseless,  limbless, 
Millions  of  women,  binding  up  the  bleeding, 
Millions  of  women  wailing  o'er  the  corpses 
To  make  which  other  women  fashioned  fire-balls; 
On  all  the  roads  processions  blister-footed — 
Old  men,  and  haggard  women,  violated, 
And  crying  children  falling  dead  from  hunger. 
God!  such  a  maze  and  burr  bemused  my  brain-cells, 
That  half  distraught  I  asked  a  dying  groaner, 
'What  is  this  place,  and  what  purports  this  frenzy?' 
'It  is,'  he  said,  with  kindling  eye  and  accent, 
'The  plain  of  Armageddon,  and  the  war 
'For  righteousness.' 


212  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

"I  fled  that  dreadful  valley, 

Stumbling  through  bloody  mists  and  fumes  and  roarings, 
Until  the  last  reverberations  faded, 
And  in  the  sunlit  grounds  of  some  great  mansion 
I  found  sweet  haven.    There  among  the  roses, 
And  on  the  grass  in  all  its  green  enchantment, 
Walked  gentle  women  with  attendant  mankind, 
Whilst  here  and  there  upon  the  sward  recumbent 
Beside  their  shadows  in  some  nook  of  summer, 
I  noted  peaceful  figures  so  engrossed, 
Each  seemed  the  spirit  of  the  brooding  season. 
One  read,  one  toyed  with  chess-men,  one  lay  fluting, 
One  wrote  a  scroll  in  inks  of  many  colors, 
One  drew  great  pentagons  and  epicycles, 
One  calculated  horoscopes;  the  noblest, 
A  priestly  figure  with  a  beard  white-flowing, 
Interpreted  a  text  apocalyptic. 
Enraptured  with  this  place  of  peace,  I  questioned 
A  passer  what  it  was. 

Quoth  he,  'A  mad-house! '" 


THE  MILITARY  PACIFISTS 

"It  was  the  same  artifice  which  the  devil  employs,  when  he  would 
seduce  those  who  are  on  their  guard,  by  transforming  himself  from 
an  angel  of  darkness  into  an  angel  of  light,  and  setting  plausible  ap- 
pearances before  them,  carries  his  point,  if  the  cloven  foot  be  not  seen 
in  the  beginning."— DON  QUIXOTE. 


The  Pacific  Pacifists  are  bad  enough  for  the  temper.  The 
"sea-green  incorruptible"  of  Pacifism  for  example  re- 
proaches me  for  refusing  to  think  the  soldier  negligible. 
"Fighting  is  for  tigers,"  he  writes  to  me,  "and  I  do  not  hap- 
pen to  be  a  tiger."  Unfortunately  other  creatures  do  happen 
to  be  tigers  and  I  am  vastly  obliged  by  the  soldier  and  his 
rifle.  The  Pacifist  is  a  shirker  not  of  military  duty  but  of 
unpleasant  facts.  Needs  must  when  the  devil  drives  and  a 
citizen  army,  purely  for  defensive  purposes,  with  civil 
rights,  and  war  under  democratic  control  is — at  this  stage 
of  human  evolution  when  Reason  and  Love  are  embryonic 
and  insufficiently  diffused — in  no  essential  contradiction 
with  the  spirit  of  Pacificism.  So,  too,  righteous  rebellion 
is  no  more  war  proper,  that  resistance  to  assassination  is 
violence  proper. 

But  the  Pacific  Pacifists  are  bearable  compared  with  the 
Military  Pacifists.  Their  notion  of  ending  war  by  wiping 
out  Germany  is  the  most  dangerous  form  of  homicidal 
mania  now  endemic.  These  well-meaning  Utopians  over- 
look two  small  things — that  you  cannot  end  Germany  and 
that  you  cannot  end  war,  at  least  in  our  time.  It  is  true 

213 


214  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

Mr.  Asquith  continues  to  ingeminate  that  "the  military 
domination  of  Prussia"  must  be  "wholly  and  finally" 
destroyed,  but  Mr.  Asquith  appears  to  believe  like  the  Bell- 
man in  The  Hunting  of  the  Snark,  "  What  I  tell  you  three 
times  is  true."1  Even  the  Russian  Foreign  Minister, 
Sazonoff,  has  had  sense  enough  to  declare  that  you  cannot 
extirpate  nearly  seventy  millions  of  people.  And  unless  you 
do  extirpate  them  you  can  no  more  get  rid  of  their  belli- 
cosity than  you  can  breed  hedgehogs  without  bristles. 

Delenda  est  Carthago.  After  twenty  centuries,  nineteen 
of  them  Christian,  two  great  countries  again  at  death- 
grips,  one  omnipotent  at  sea  and  one  apparently  invincible 
on  land,  and  each  crying  this  of  the  other. 

It  is  true  I  have  myself  walked  over  the  ruins  of  Carthage. 
But  it  required  Three  Punic  Wars  and  a  hundred  and  eight- 
een years  to  destroy  her  and  Cato  of  the  famous  delenda  est 
did  not  live  to  see  it  done.  Whereas  our  pacifist  militarists 
want  to  make  only  one  bite  at  their  cherry.  And  this  al- 
though as  Bonar  Law  pointed  out  it  was  the  commercial 
Carthage  that  the  military  Rome  conquered,  and  though 
it  is  we  that  have,  like  Carthage,  the  motley  hordes,  and 
Germany  which  has,  like  Rome,  the  unified  army. 

As  a  rule,  Utopians  do  no  harm,  if  little  good.  But  in 
chasing  the  mirage  of  a  Germany  in  ruins,  they  may  work 
woeful  mischief  to  England,  setting  her  fortunes,  as  they 
do,  on  the  fall  of  a  single  die,  and  declaring,  as  they  do, 
that  nothing  matters — not  even  bankruptcy — so  long  as  the 
pursual  of  their  Will-o '-the- Wisp  is  unrelaxed.  Being  mili- 
tarists, they  imagine  themselves  practical,  and  that  is  the 
worst  delusion  of  all.  When  a  "practical"  man  gets  a 
bee  in  his  bonnet,  his  very  command  of  the  machinery  of 
action  makes  him  infinitely  more  dangerous  than  your  pale 

1  Since  this  was  written  both  Mr.  Asquith  and  Sir  Edward  Grey  have 
fortunately  toned  down  the  crudity  of  the  Guild  Hall  Formula. 


THE  MILITARY  PACIFISTS  215 

academic  idealists.  Imagine  Sancho  Panza  tilting  against 
windmills!  In  his  fury  against  giants  he  would  have  actu- 
ally have  destroyed  the  sails  as  well  as  himself.  Whereas 
Don  Quixote  only  killed  seven  sheep  when  he  mistook  them 
for  the  squadrons  of  Alifanfaron,  his  henchman  would  have 
slain  the  flock.  Your  military  pacifist  not  only  idealizes 
his  impossible  Dulcinea,  he  would  actually  marry  her. 
He  would  pay  a  pedigree  price  for  Rozinante. 

II 

The  notion  of  ending  war  by  the  sword  is  not  only  chimer- 
ical— like  the  notion  of  ending  beards  by  the  razor — it 
has  not  even  the  moral  value  of  most  Utopian  ideas.  As 
I  wrote  to  a  Peace  Conference:  " Tennyson,  who  is  con- 
sidered out-of-date,  though  he  predicted  the  Zeppelins, 
has  really  said  the  last  word  on  the  subject. 

'Move  upward,  working  out  the  beast, 
And  let  the  ape  and  tiger  die.' 

In  short,  all  war  is  a  gorilla  warfare,  and  can  only  end  when 
the  gorilla  is  worked  out.  Even  therefore  if  we  could  ex- 
tirpate Germany  and  leave  our  children  the  legacy  of  a 
compulsory  military  peace,  they  would  only  be  like  the 
children  of  millionaires,  who  generally  go  to  the  dogs. 
Every  generation  must  work  out  its  own  peace  or  fight 
its  own  battles.  There  is  no  pre-natal  salvation.  The 
world  can  only  be  saved  by  Reason  and  Love.  But  even 
of  these  each  generation  must  bring  its  own." 

Ill 

The  whole  conception  of  setting  up  posterity  in  vegetable 
beatitude  belongs  in  fact  to  the  same  order  of  religious 


2l6  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

thinking  as  the  lotus-eating  heaven  that  awaits  ourselves. 
"No  patched-up  peace,"  cries  the  Stop-the-peace  party. 
"Nothing  that  would  expose  our  children  to  a  revival  of 
the  German  menace."  We  are  forsooth  to  be  wild  boars 
that  our  children  may  be  tame  pigs  in  clover.  But  we 
cannot,  if  we  would,  steal  their  burdens  and  responsibilities. 
Nothing  can  be  saved  or  lost  except  for  our  own  generation. 
To  suppose  that  you  can  establish  a  State — or  even  a  state 
of  peace  in  scecula  s&culorum  is  a  fallacy.  As  Mr.  G.  K. 
Chesterton  has  pointed  out,  a  post  painted  white  does  not 
remain  white.  Zoroaster  and  the  old  Persian  theologians 
who  saw  the  universe  under  the  image  of  the  war  of 
Ormuzd  and  Ahriman  failed  in  insight  and  courage 
when  they  threw  in  the  sop  of  a  "final"  victory  with  the 
coming  of  "The  Good  Kingdom,"  or  "The  Kingdom  of 
Desire." 

The  reward  of  battle  is  not  victory  but  the  beginning 
of  new  battle  and  the  cost  of  everything  must  be  paid 
again  and  again.  Nothing  is  on  sale  but  everything  on 
hire,  and  it  is  not  liberty  alone  whose  price  is  eternal  vigil- 
ance. Have  we  not  just  seen  that  no  British  might,  how- 
ever ancient,  is  beyond  challenge,  no  British  right,  however 
constitutional,  beyond  annulment,  no  British  newspaper, 
however  old-established,  beyond  bankruptcy? 

One  might  ask  the  Military  Militarists  at  least,  why  if 
war  brings  so  many  noble  virtues,  our  children  should  be 
removed  from  its  influences.  And  one  might  ask  even  the 
Pacifist  Militarists  why  our  children  should  not  "do  their 
bit." 

"The  work  we  have  on  hand  must  be  done  once  for  all," 
says  the  Times.  That  is  dangerous  nonsense.  "Never 
again!"  says  the  Military  Pacificist.  And  echo  answers 
mockingly:  "Ever  again!"  For  there  must  be  either  a  win 
or  a  draw.  If  a  win  the  conquered  side  will  prepare  for 


THE   MILITARY  PACIFISTS  217 

reprisals, — die  Roche  or  La  revanche! — if  a  draw,  either 
side  will  think 

"Oh,  the  little  more,  and  how  much  it  is." 

Far  saner  is  the  saying  of  the  Talmud:  "It  is  not  thy 
duty  to  complete  the  work,  neither  is  it  thy  duty  to  neglect 
it." 

IV 

When  therefore  we  find  Mr.  Asquith  saying  at  a  Lord 
Mayor's  banquet,  "Be  the  journey  long  or  short,  we  shall 
not  pause  or  falter  until  we  have  secured  for  the  smaller 
States  of  Europe  their  charter  of  independence,  and  for 
Europe  itself,  and  for  the  world  at  large,  their  final  emanci- 
pation from  the  reign  of  force,"  though  our  heart  glows, 
and  we  see  the  world  through  rosy  mists  as  of  Guildhall 
port,  yet  our  head  misgives  us.  For,  though  Mr.  Asquith's 
journey  is  in  the  right  direction  and  I  wish  him  Godspeed, 
yet  if  it  means  that  this  final  emancipation  is  to  be  wrought 
at  one  blow — and  if  to  deliver  this  blow  we  are  to  throw 
the  "British  Empire's  last  shilling"  upon  the  green  cloth, 
then  it  is  a  madder  Quixotism  than  Cervantes  ever  dreamed 
of.  But  Mr.  Asquith's  knight-errantry  seems  to  know  no 
bounds.  Did  he  not  say  when  he  was  falsely  accused  of 
telling  what  would  at  worst  have  been  a  diplomatic  or 
white-paper  lie  about  Lord  Kitchener's  alleged  resignation, 
that  that  would  have  been  "stooping  to  an  infamy  almost 
indescribable  ?  "  What  words,  I  wonder,  would  he  have  had 
left  for  a  statesman  who  remained  in  office  after  saying 
that  sooner  than  introduce  conscription  he  would  resign  ? 

So  white  a  flower  of  blameless  life  has  seldom  been  seen 
in  a  politician's  buttonhole.  But  if  standards  of  honor 
are  to  be  kept  at  such  Alpine  heights,  we  cannot  lower  our 
standards  of  sanity  too  abysmally.  The  Stop-the-Peace 


2l8  THE   WAR  FOR   THE  WORLD 

Party  should  really  attend  to  Tolstoy's  adjuration  to  "stop 
and  think." 


As  for  Perpetual  Peace,  Immanuel  Kant  who  wrote  a 
great  little  treatise  on  the  subject  in  the  practical  form  of  a 
treaty  did  not  expect  humanity  ever  to  reach  it.  It  was 
to  be  a  "regulative"  idea.  And  it  was  to  be  approached 
not  by  militarism  but  by  moral  improvement.  Nor  was 
it  possible — without  grave  injustices — till  humanity  had 
organized  itself  in  Republics.  Kant,  who  was  as  shrewd 
as  he  was  profound — he  had  Scotch  blood — saw  to  the 
heart  of  a  subject  about  which  most  pacifists — and  most 
of  the  well-meaning  World-Parliament  projects  now  pour- 
ing so  profusely  from  the  press  of  every  country — merely 
grope  and  fumble. 

Before  you  can  have  "the  United  States  of  Europe" 
you  must  have  the  separate  Republican  States  that  Amer- 
ica united.  To  unite  States  at  so  many  varying  phases 
of  political  evolution — even  if  a  principle  of  representa- 
tion could  be  found — would  tend  to  stereotype  the  back- 
ward. For  either  the  central  authority  would  not  inter- 
fere with  their  internal  affairs,  thus  leaving  their  present 
despots  a  free  hand,  or  it  would  interfere  to  repress  revolu- 
tion and  thus  make  it  eternally  hopeless. 

It  was  upon  this  rock  that  the  Holy  Alliance  of  1815 
split.  Peace,  though  honestly  sought,  was  sought  not  on 
the  basis  of  a  rearrangement  of  the  world  by  Reason  and 
Love  but  on  the  existing  basis  of  autocracies  and  mon- 
archies with  a  potentiality  of  dragooning  minorities,  na- 
tional or  sectional,  by  the  " Supernational  Authority" 
of  which  we  now  hear  again.  Moreover,  when  it  is  sought 
to  set  up  a  tribunal  of  justice  among  the  nations  on  the 
analogy  of  justice  among  individuals,  the  analogy  breaks 


THE  MILITARY  PACIFISTS  2 19 

down.  For  what  is  a  nation?  What  is  England?  What 
Germany?  What  Russia?  These  are  living  and  therefore 
perpetually  shifting  concepts,  always  expanding,  diminish- 
ing, changing.  How  again  find  a  common  basis  for  Mexico 
and  China,  for  Canada  and  Monaco?  If  it  be  said  that 
individuals,  too,  differ  in  size  and  strength  and  wealth  and 
are  constantly  changing  in  all  these  qualities,  and  yet  a 
common  rule  of  justice  has  been  established,  the  answer 
is  that  it  has  not  been  established.  A  state  of  comparative 
social  peace  has  been  established — tranquillity  tempered 
by  strikes  and  starvation.  It  is  not,  as  Nietzsche  argued, 
that  social  ethics  is  the  device  of  the  weak  to  keep  them- 
selves in  existence  against  the  strong.  Quite  the  contrary. 
The  social  order  is  the  device  of  the  strong  to  keep  the 
weak  in  existence  for  their  service.  Until  a  righteous  social 
order  is  established  we  cry  "  Peace,  peace,  when  there  is 
no  peace,"  even  in  the  individual  commonwealth. 

"The  Kingdom  of  God,"  like  Charity,  begins  at  home. 
When  it  is  in  reasonable  swing  there,  we  may  begin  to 
link  it  up  with  other  provinces  of  the  Kingdom.  To  bring 
about  a  millennium  of  the  existing  order — uninformed  by 
social  passion  and  devoid  even  of  the  tragic  spirituality 
of  war — would  be  to  bring  about  not  the  Kingdom  of  God 
but  of  the  Devil.  The  road  to  Mr.  Asquith's  noble  ideal 
is  long  and  toilsome.  I  am  very  willing  we  shall  not  pause 
and  falter  in  it,  but  to  suppose  that  the  destruction  of 
Germany  is  the  end  of  the  journey,  to  cry  Delenda  est 
Carthago  in  the  name  of  Perpetual  Peace  generations  before 
the  world  is  ripe  for  it,  is  mere  chicanery. 

VI 

Perpetual  Peace,  in  its  literal  sense,  is  as  much  a  fallacy 
as  perpetual  motion,  nay  a  greater  fallacy,  for  perpetual 


220  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

motion,  though  we  cannot  create  it,  at  least  exists  in  nature, 
whereas  perpetual  peace  does  not  exist  at  all.  If  it  did, 
it  would  mean  a  universe  not  of  life,  but  of  death,  and  it  is 
as  barren  an  ideal  for  humanity  as  for  nature.  What  is 
meant,  however,  is  not  stagnation,  but  movement  without 
murder.  Even  this  cannot  be  found  in  nature,  nor  can 
humanity  create  it  except  within  the  narrow  human  sphere. 
But  it  is  possible  there  as  within  the  narrower  spheres  of 
families,  clans,  and  nations,  and  were  the  Martians  really 
able  to  invade  our  globe  and  perpetually  menacing  us,  it 
would  be  achieved  to-morrow.  Hegel  who  preceded  Treit- 
schke  and  Moltke  in  glorifying  war,  held  war  was  indispen- 
sable because  everything  needed  opposition.  He  forgot 
that  humanity  finds  all  the  opposition  it  needs  in  Nature. 

The  question  remains  whether  our  Quixote  could  utterly 
destroy  Germany,  even  if  it  was  the  knightly  thing  to  do. 
But  that  is  a  technical  question  which  the  Militarists  can 
answer  better  than  I.  My  province  is  merely  to  point 
out  that  that  way  lies  Madness,  not  Perpetual  Peace. 

"  From  the  lie  there  comes  no  life,"  said  Heine,  "  and 
God  can  never  be  saved  by  the  Devil." 


THE  ABSURD  SIDE  OF  ALLIANCES 


"Now  B,  on  some  convenient  day, 
Will  make  a  secret  league  with  A, 
In  which  they  practically  say 

They'll  go  for  C  together; 
The  secret,  being  one  of  state, 
Is  certain  to  evaporate, 
And  C  may  soon  anticipate 

Extremely  sultry  weather. 
So  C  his  neighbor  will  fatigue 
With  patriotic  base  intrigue, 
Until  he  makes  a  secret  league 

With  each  of  both  the  others; 
And  any  two  to  fight  are  loth, 
Because  the  third  is  bound  by  oath 
To  fight  against  and  for  them  both, 

As  enemies  and  brothers." — ADRIAN  Ross. 

These  immortal  lines  by  a  confectioner  of  musical  comedy, 
who  in  a  more  literate  age  might  have  become  our  Aris- 
tophanes, sufficiently  dispose  of  "The  Balance  of  Power" 
as  a  moral  mechanism.  "At  the  very  moment  the  Act  of 
Algeciras  was  signed,"  wrote  Baron  Greindl,  the  Belgian 
diplomatic  representative  at  Berlin  in  1911,  "three  at 
least  of  the  participating  Powers  were  contracting  under- 
takings among  themselves  which  were  incompatible  with 
their  public  professions."  As  the  poet  goes  on  to  say — and 
Italy  and  Bulgaria  have  illustrated  the  thesis  afresh— 

"You  cannot  depend 

On  a  foe  or  a  friend 
When  it  comes  to  The  Balance  of  Power." 

221 


222  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

The  question  is,  however,  not  one  of  morals  but  of 
politics— of  security,  first,  against  war,  secondly,  against 
conquest.  But  the  first  kind  of  security  seems — for  any 
individual  member  of  the  rival  groups  of  Powers — to  be 
diminished  rather  than  enhanced,  since  friction  between 
any  two  members  compromises  all  the  others.  Indeed,  it 
is  less  surprising  that  the  jugglers  should  drop  one  of  so 
many  balls  than  that  they  should  keep  them  all  safely  in 
the  air.  And  the  fall  of  one  means  the  collapse  of  all. 
Thus  a  shot  fired  in  Serbia  has  assassinated  millions  of 
every  race,  creed  and  color,  and  sent  people  to  die  at  their 
Antipodes  or  in  regions  they  had  never  heard  of.  Aus- 
tralians have  perished  in  Gallipoli,  and  the  bones  of  Dorset 
Yeomanry  lie  in  the  deserts  of  Tripoli. 

Security  against  conquest  is,  however,  another  matter. 
San  Marino  has  maintained  herself  for  centuries  by  playing 
off  one  neighbor  against  another,  and  why  should  not  the 
British  Empire  copy  San  Marino?  That  policy  is  not 
refuted  by  Mr.  Shaw's  comparison  of  it  to  the  attempt  to 
empty  the  Atlantic  by  pouring  its  water  into  the  Pacific. 
Redistribution  of  forces  is  its  essence.  To  balance  things 
in  motion  means  perpetual  shifting  of  position.  To  be  with 
Prussia  against  France  in  1815  and  with  France  against 
Prussia  in  1915;  to  be  with  Turkey  against  Russia  in  the 
Crimean  War  and  with  Russia  against  Turkey  to-day,  is 
not  the  absurdity  I  would  indict.  For  Lord  Salisbury  to 
say  "The  Ottoman  Empire  must  stand,"  and  for  Mr.  As- 
quith  to  say  it  must  fall,  is  not  ridiculous.  Circumstances 
alter  cases.  What  is  absurd  in  this  shifting  quadrille  is  to 
lampoon  the  partner  of  yesterday  and  beslaver  the  partner 
of  to-day. 


THE  ABSURD   SIDE   OF  ALLIANCES  223 

II 

There  are  obviously  two  and  only  two  methods  of  polit- 
ical alliance.  The  one  seeks  the  line  of  greatest  united 
power,  the  other  of  greatest  common  ideals.  The  first  is 
a  mechanical  union,  the  second  a  moral.  A  moral  union 
is  obviously  only  possible  between  nations  of  the  same 
degree  of  political  development.  Thus  when  Russia  pur- 
sued what  the  foreign  editor  of  the  Novoe  Vremya  now 
calls  the  " ill-omened  policy"  of  supporting  "thrones," 
wherever  they  tottered;  when  it  combated  Republican 
France,  propped  up  Turkey,  and  built  up  Prussia  and  the 
Kaiser,  its  alliances  were  moral.  When  it  joined  Re- 
publican France,  the  alliance  was  mechanical. 

Now  it  may  be  politically  permissible  for  a  nation  to 
marry,  so  to  speak,  for  money  and  position;  and  not  for 
love.  But  it  is  not  permissible  to  pretend  that  the  heiress 
is  your  affinity.  For  though  it  is  not  theoretically  im- 
possible to  achieve  such  a  happy  match,  it  is  an  unlikely 
political  contingency  that  the  path  of  safety  and  power 
should  also  coincide  with  the  course  of  true  love  or  the  road 
to  righteousness.  Such  alliances,  if  not  immoral,  become 
so  when  they  pretend  to  be  moral. 

Yet  it  is  this  make-believe  that  all  nations  childishly 
play  at,  it  is  in  honor  of  this  puerile  pretence  that  Presi- 
dents, Kings  and  Emperors  raise  their  glasses.  The  rich 
and  newly-divorced  bride  is  invariably  beautiful,  and  the 
love  that  binds  her  and  her  new  partner  is  a  romantic 
passion.  In  the  quest  of  "The  Balance  of  Power"  the 
erstwhile  President  of  the  Amphictyon  of  Europe  must  woo 
with  mandolin,  purse,  and  sonnet  every  minx  and  drab 
of  a  State  that  once  panted  for  a  single  glance  from  his 
beaux  yeux.  Sir  Edward  Grey  is  simultaneously  glorified 
as  the  paladin  of  Europe  and  vilipended  for  having  failed 


224  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

to  win  over  what  is  now  described  as  "  bloodthirsty  Bul- 
garia." One  wonders  if  Roumania  got  ready  noble  mani- 
festors  for  either  contingency. 

The  notion  that  our  alliances  can  be  moral  and  not  me- 
chanical survives  the  revelation  that  Sir  Edward  Grey 
has  had  to  bribe  his  way,  or  has  tried  to  bribe  his  way, 
offering  now  Cyprus  to  Greece,  anon  the  Dalmatian  coast 
to  Italy,  and  that  we  are  compelled  to  tolerate  the  Mili- 
tarismus  of  Japan  against  China,  despite  our  treaty  obliga- 
tion to  maintain  the  integrity  of  Chinese  independence. 

The  German  Chancellor  in  a  flash  of  candor  admitted  that 
the  invasion  of  Belgium  was  wrong.  The  blush  of  shame 
was  transient  and  soon  sicklied  o'er  with  the  pale  cast  of 
sophistry.  But  why  blush  at  all?  Why  should  we  not 
all  admit  that  necessity  knows  no  law — and  no  love? 

Ill 

With  Alliances  candidly  envisaged  as  political  and  me- 
chanical, the  incessant  chassez-croisez  of  the  political  dance 
would  not  expose  us  to  the  indecent  necessity  of  virtuous 
protestation.  Germany — herself  guilty  of  siding  with  the 
assassins  of  the  Armenians — makes  great  play  with  our 
hypocrisy  in  calling  in  colored  troops  to  "take  up  the 
white  man's  burden."  It  is  strange  how,  forgetting  that 
Krieg  ist  Krieg,  she  becomes  as  romantic  as  Ruskin  where 
other  people's  cold-bloodedness  is  concerned.  The  real  in- 
advisability  of  such  Alliances  lies  in  their  future  rebound 
on  ourselves. 

But  apart  from  the  fact  that  colored  interests  are  threat- 
ened by  Germany  no  less  than  white  interests,  these  motley 
forces  are  to  us  mere  engines  and  munitions  of  war,  and 
they  have  the  advantage  over  white  allies  that  there  is  no 
need  to  express  devoted  affection  for  them.  It  is  true  a 


THE  ABSURD   SIDE   OF  ALLIANCES  22$ 

Manchester  paper  suggested  I  ought  to  recognize  the  en- 
lightenment of  our  Fiji  Islanders  in  choosing  between  us 
and  Prussian  militarism,  but  this  was  surely  written  by 
a  budding  Swift. 

No,  let  us  not  be  too  adoring  even  of  our  white  allies. 
Lord  Melbourne  said  there  was  no  d  -  d  nonsense  of 
merit  about  the  Garter;  let  there  be  no  d  --  d  nonsense  of 
sentiment  about  Alliances.  Then  we  shall  all  look  less 
silly.  To-day,  owing  to  the  tactlessness  of  the  Censor  and 
the  Editors,  Russia  has  been  so  overdone  with  compli- 
ments that  she  has  grown  suspicious  and  begins  to  ask 
what  chestnuts  England  wants  pulled  out  of  the  fire.1  As 
for  France,  what  schoolboy  does  not  remember  the  disdain 
for  the  defeated  of  Waterloo,  the  miseries  of  Froggy,  the 
French  Master?  Is  he  a  hero  now,  I  wonder,  in  every  dor- 
mitory? 

An  octogenarian  tells  how  he  formed  one  of  a  bodyguard 
of  young  men  to  protect  John  Bright  from  the  angry  Man- 
chester mob.  Bright  was  then  the  "pro-Russian"  who  was 
ready  to  see  Turkey  dismembered,  as  Tzar  Nicholas  I 
had  so  wickedly  suggested. 

Again  and  again  Bright  protested  in  his  speeches  that 
though  he  thought  the  safety  of  England  did  not  demand 
that  the  military  power  of  Russia  should  be  wholly  and 
finally  destroyed,  yet  he  was  as  good  an  Englishman  as 
any  anti-Russian. 

The  inconvenient  memory  of  this  octogenarian  recalls 
that  France  was  the  Germany  of  his  young  days,  the 
country  that  had  to  be  crushed  before  she  got  too  strong. 
Then  the  rhyme  ran: 


from  the  utilitarian  point  of  view  the  Alliance  of  Russia  with 
Western  Powers  is  not  easily  workable,  for,  as  M.  Stephen  Pichon,  late 
French  Foreign  Minister  points  out,  when  co-operation  is  required,  the 
different  political  constitutions  are  a  great  bar  to  consultation  and  joint 
resolutions. 


226  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

"  Two  bony  Frenchmen  and  one  Portugee, 
One  jolly  Englishman  can  lick  all  three. " 

In  1853  there  was  a  panic.  Bent  on  revenge  for  Waterloo, 
France,  it  was  said,  designed  to  invade  England.  A  pro- 
Frenchman  was  a  traitor.  Yet  by  the  end  of  1853  the  Eng- 
lish and  French  were  allies  in  the  Crimean  War.  French- 
men changed  from  "a  people  of  treacherous  and  envious 
instincts"  to  "a  polished  and  chivalrous  nation,"  and  the 
octogenarian  remembers  seeing  Englishmen  "hugging,  and 
even  kissing  them,  Continental  fashion." 

"I  have  known  Russians,"  he  says,  "to  be  regarded  as  the 
heroic  saviors  (along  with  ourselves)  of  Europe  against  France, 
then  as  dark  conspirators  against  all  civilization  and  human 
freedom,  and  finally  as  heroes  of  defence  against  the  aggres- 
sions of  a  world-threatening  German  militarism.  The  Turks 
I  have  known  in  turns  to  be  regarded  as  innocent  'gentlemen' 
persecuted  by  Russia,  vile  assassins  of  Bulgaria,  enlightened 
reformers  under  a  regime  of  Young  Turks,  and  finally  as  des- 
picable tools  of  German  wickedness.  I  need  not  say  how  Bul- 
garia itself  has  changed  from  good  to  bad,  or  how  the  Boers  of 
South  Africa  have  changed  from  bad  to  good.  In  my  young 
days  the  Prussians  were  so  popular  that  public-houses  were 
called  after  their  kings  and  generals.  The  hope  of  all  English- 
men seemed  to  be  that  Prussia  should  become  the  centre  of  a 
great  united  Germany  to  form  a  bulwark  against  Russian  pos- 
sible aggressions.  .  .  .  When  Russia  conquered  Poland  our 
poet  described  how  ' Freedom  shrieked  as  Kosciusko  fell.'  But 
I  have  lived  to  hear  regrets  at  the  ejection  of  Russia  from 
Poland.  It  is  a  wondrous  kaleidoscopic  jumble." 

A  jumble  indeed!  And  who  knows  where  Germany  will 
be  at  the  next  shake?  Says  Thackeray  in  his  article  on 
The  German  in  England:  "It  insults  every  country  with 
which  it  has  to  deal  by  absurd  assumptions  of  superiority. 
It  threatens  all  with  war,  or  discord  or  invasion:  it  shuts 


THE  ABSURD   SIDE   OF  ALLIANCES  227 

up  its  ports  to  foreign  commerce;  and  distrusting  everyone, 
cheating  where  it  can,  bullying  where  it  dares,  and  insolent 
always,  it  bewails  the  unfriendliness  of  Europe,  and  com- 
plains of  unjust  isolation." 

Thackeray  was  speaking  not  of  Germany  but  of  France — 
the  France  of  1842! 

And  for  this  France  the  seeds  of  distrust  lingered  on  till 
the  very  eve  of  the  Great  War.  Witness  our  shrinking 
from  the  construction  of  a  Channel  Tunnel  which  would 
have  now — free  from  submarine  risk — not  only  conveyed 
our  soldiers  to  the  Continent  but  subserved  the  still  more 
valuable  function  of  pouring  in  food  from  all  allied  and 
neutral  lands  in  the  event  of  Germany's  success  in  seriously 
interfering  with  our  food-ships.  Now  we  have  come 
back  to  the  hugging  and  kissing,  but  our  countries,  alas! 
are  still  uncoupled.  And  to  think  that  in  a  few  years 
hence  the  quadrille  will  be  differently  disposed,  the  Presi- 
dents and  the  Emperors  now  devastating  each  other's 
dominions  in  implacable  enmity  will  be  raising  their  glasses 
to  each  other  with  rhetorical  flourishes. 

It  is  all  very  like  the  mentality  of  schoolboys,  among 
whom  the  thickest  comrades  are  apt  to  tumble  into  a  period 
of  dumb  hostility — to  be  succeeded  by  a  period  of  enhanced 
appreciation.  I  can  vividly  recall  the  bliss  of  these  recon- 
ciliations when  the  rosy  points  of  the  boycotted  pal  fused 
into  a  picture  more  glowing  than  ever.  Indeed,  the  whole 
war  is  reminiscent  of  a  schoolboy  scuffle,  with  each  urchin 
crying  to  the  Master:  " Please,  sir,  it  wasn't  me.  He  began 
it."  It  would  all  be  supremely  laughable  were  it  not  also 
a  tragedy  too  deep  for  tears. 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORDS 

"For  with  words  we  govern  men." — LORD  BEACONSFIELD 


We  shall  not  sheathe  the  sword 
...  till  the  military  domination 
of  Prussia  is  wholly  and  finally 
destroyed.  .  .  . — MR.  ASQUITH. 


No  patched-up  peace  that  will 
expose  our  children  to  a  revival 
of  the  German  menace. — JOHN 
HODGE,  M.  P.,  and  British 
Statesmen  generally. 


Unless  Germany  is  forced  out 
of  Belgium,  all  Europe  will  be 
under  the  rule  of  blood  and  iron. 
— British  Press,  passim. 

This  must  be  a  war  to  end  war. 
—MR.  H.  G.  WELLS. 


It  is  absolutely  necessary  that 
Russia  and  England  be  driven 
from  their  present  unnatural  posi- 
tion of  power. — HERR  PATTAI, 
late  President  of  the  Austrian 
Chamber  of  Deputies. 

If  we  do  not  accomplish  this, 
the  war  will  end  without  any  real 
decision,  and  peace  will  not  lib- 
erate the  world  from  the  perpet- 
ual war-danger  with  which  Eng- 
land and  Russia  threaten  the 
civilized  world. — HERR  PATTAI. 

Unless  Belgium  is  evacuated, 
there  will  be  an  appalling  era  of 
militarism,  directed  against  Ger- 
many.— Bund  Nettes  Vaterland. 

The  supreme  task  of  the  nego- 
tiators of  the  settlement  must  be 
to  exterminate  not  only  war  it- 
self, which  has  destroyed  whole 
generations,  but  also  the  fever 
of  armaments. — HERR  BALLIN  in 
Vossische  Zeitung. 


If  we  mean  anything  by  our  They  must  also  devise  some 
declaration  that  this  is  a  war  sort  of  assurance  that  this  bloody 
against  war,  we  shall  simply  be  war  will  not  be  followed  by  an 

228 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORDS 


229 


playing  the  fool  if  we  proceed  to 
set  up  a  fiscal  system  which  in- 
evitably makes  for  ill- will  among 
nations. — J.  M.  ROBERTSON, 
M.  P. 

Belgium,  and  I  will  add  Serbia, 
must  recover  all,  and  more  than 
all,  they  have  lost. — MR.  As- 

QUITH. 


The  war  was  made  in  Germany. 
— I.-  ZANGWILL'S  Appeal  to  Neu- 
trals. 


Forty  years  of  preparation  for 
the  crushing  of  England. — Brit- 
ish Press,  passim. 

No  one  thought  of  attacking 
Germany;  there  was  not  a  meas- 
ure taken  by  any  other  Power 
that  was  not  purely  defensive; 
the  German  preparations  were 
for  attack  and  were  far  ahead  of 
others  on  the  Continent. — SIR 
EDWARD  GREY. 


With  the  Germans  their  own 
natural  superiority  has  become  a 


economic  war. — HERR  BALLIN  hi 

same. 


One  has  never  heard  anything, 
on  the  other  hand,  as  to  England 
and  Japan  being  willing  to  give 
up  the  colonies  occupied  by 
them. — Vossische  Zeitung. 

We  did  not  want  this  war. — 
BETHMANN-HOLLWEG. 

It  was  not  we  who  conjured  up 
this  war. — COUNT  TISZA  (Aus- 
tria). 

A  programme  for  the  smashing 
of  Germany  drove  her  opponents 
into  the  war. — Hamburger  Frem- 
denblatt  (Militarist). 

For  the  last  forty-three  years 
there  has  not  been  a  single  man 
in  the  whole  domain  of  Germany, 
who  wanted  war,  not  one.  .  .  . 
In  England,  on  the  contrary,  I 
found  during  my  last  visits  in 
1907  and  1908  everywhere  a 
frightful,  blind  hatred  of  Ger- 
many and  the  impatient  expecta- 
tion of  a  war  of  annihilation. — 
HOUSTEN  CHAMBERLAIN  in  The 
Fatherland. 

The  dread  of  Germany's  de- 
signs was  a  delusion,  a  disastrous 
misunderstanding. — Manifesto  of 
150  German  Intellectuals. 

The  Germans  err  rather  on 
the  side  of  an  exaggerated  appre- 


230 


THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 


first  principle. — G.  K.  CHESTER- 
TON in  New  York  American. 


ciation  of  the  merits  of  other 
nations. — HOUSTON  CHAMBER- 
LAIN in  The  Fatherland. 


The  fleet  is  at  this  moment 
performing  not  for  Britain  alone, 
nor  yet  for  Britain's  Allies,  but 
for  the  whole  world  a  most  im- 
portant part  in  the  drama  now 
being  played  out  for  the  freedom 
of  the  world. — MR.  BALFOUR  at 
the  Empire. 

The  Bulwark  of  the  cause  of 
man. — Times. 

We  and  our  Allies  believe  that 
we  are  fighting  to  maintain  the 
cause  of  Christ. — THE  BISHOP  OF 
NORWICH. 


Germany  is  really  fighting  for 
the  whole  of  Europe  when  trying 
to  break  England's  rule. — Kol- 
nische  Volkszeitung. 

We  are  fighting  for  a  just  cause, 
for  freedom,  for  the  right  of  our 
nation  to  exist,  for  a  long  future 
peace. — THE  KAISER. 

We  are  fighting  against  a 
Hydra  of  enemies  in  a  battle  for 
our  existence  and  for  the  liberty 
of  the  world. — TSAR  FERDINAND. 

A  war  for  truth  and  right,  for 
humanity  and  morality:  a  war 
for  Christianity  itself. — PASTOR 
DORRFUSS. 


We  shall  not  pause  or  falter 
till  we  have  assured  .  .  .  for 
Europe  and  for  the  world  at  large 
their  final  emancipation  from  the 
reign  of  force. — MR.  ASQUITH. 

Germany's  philosophy  is  that 
a  settled  peace  spells  disintegra- 
tion, degeneracy,  etc.  .  .  .  We 
are  fighting  this  idea. — SIR  ED- 
WARD GREY. 


Bryce  Report  on  the  Atrocities 
in  Belgium.  Press  Comment  on 
the  Sinking  of  the  Lusitania,  the 
Zeppelin  Raids,  Bombardment  of 
Rheims  Cathedral,  etc. 


Christmas  still  finds  the  peo- 
ples of  Europe  engaged  in  the 
sorry  task  of  turning  this  old  and 
beautiful  Continent  into  a  heap 
of  ruins. — HERR  BALLIN. 
We  have  hated  war, 
To  us  it  was  the  nightmare  of  the 

world 

Alone  we  bear  the  load  now; 
That  eternal  peace  may  come. — 
BRUNO  FRANK:  Strophen  in  Krieg. 

These  things  are  not  separate 
acts,  but  links  in  the  system  of 
murder — the  question  is  justified 
whether  we  can  regard  such  fight- 
ers as  being  on  the  same  level  as 
honorable  soldiers  and  sailors. — 
Lokalanzeiger. 


THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORDS 


231 


A  war  made  up,  mainly,  ap- 
parently of  calculated  ferocity, 
shameful  and  murderous  atroc- 
ities. My  German  neighbors 
were  after  all,  it  appears,  spies, 
and  the  stories  of  a  long-planned 
invasion  only  too  true. — Letter 
to  Norman  Angell,  printed  in 
War  and  Peace. 

Then  by  what  right  can  you 
still  pretend,  as  you  have  written, 
that  you  are  fighting  for  the  cause 
of  liberty  and  progress? — Ro- 
MAIN  ROLLAND:  Open  Letter  to 
Gerhart  Hauptmann. 

The  struggle  of  civilization  it- 
self against  barbarism. — BERG- 
SON. 

The  killing  of  Germans  is  a 
Divine  Service. — ARCHDEACON 

WlLBERFORCE. 

Germany  has  violated  the 
Hague  Conventions  by  pillage, 
illegal  levies,  bombarding  unde- 
fended towns,  torpedoing  pas- 
senger vessels,  collective  penalties 
for  individual  acts,  wanton  de- 
struction of  artistic  buildings, 
etc. — New  Statesman. 


The   Huns,    the   baby-killers, 
etc.,  etc. — British  Press,  passim. 


Innumerable  are  the  cases  in 
which,  in  the  course  of  this  war, 
England  has  lifted  from  her  face 
that  mask  of  the  pioneer  for  hu- 
man liberty,  justice  and  civiliza- 
tion and  shown  her  true  features. 
Compared  with  the  envy  and 
greed  which  has  caused  a  world 
conflagration,  how  harmless  does 
the  honest,  manly  German  anger 
against  England  appear. — 
Pamphlets  of  "War  Committee 
of  German  industry  in  Berlin," 
No.  18.  The  Baralong. 

A  war  between  Germanism  and 
barbarism — the  logical  successor 
of  our  wars  against  the  Huns. — 
KARL  LAMPRECHT. 

Bayoneting  the  enemy  is  serv- 
ing God. — PASTOR  SCHLETTER. 

It  is  probable  that  the  English 
are  confessing  to  themselves  that 
a  war  against  the  German  Em- 
pire, even  though  it  be  waged 
with  a  gigantic  indecency,  with 
robbery,  piracy,  kidnapping,  vio- 
lation of  the  Red  Cross,  with  flag 
juggling,  with  assassination  and 
butchery  of  the  lowest  kind,  is  no 
good  and  profitable  business. — 
Hamburger  Nachrichten. 

We  ask  in  astonishment  how 
the  policy  of  a  people  can  sink 
further  than  the  stage  which 
England  has  reached  with  the 
defence  of  the  Baralong  case. — 
HERR  FISCHBECK  in  the  Reich- 
stag. 


232 


THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 


The  Germans  have  destroyed 
the  work  of  The  Hague.  With- 
out good  faith  between  the  na- 
tions, International  Law  is  im- 
possible. After  the  treatment  of 
Belgium  it  is  impossible  to  put 
faith  again  in  treaties. — British 
Press,  passim. 


The  arrest  (of  the  Consuls  at 
Salonika)  is  only  one  more  link 
in  the  long  chain  of  violations  of 
international  law  perpetrated  by 
England  and  France. — German 
Press,  passim. 

We  must  resume  and  continue 
the  work  of  the  Hague  Confer- 
ence. We  must  do  away  with  all 
prejudices  against  international 
treaties.  It  is  not  brute  force 
which  can  give  value  to  treaties 
but  good  faith  between  the  na- 
tions that  ratified  them. — HERR 
BALLIN. 


Peace  through  Victory.  (La 
paix  par  la  victoire.) — French 
formula. 


The  road  to  peace  lies  through 
victory. — Munchner  Neueste 
Nachrichten. 

If  our  enemies  desire  the  mur- 
der of  men  and  desolation  of 
Europe  to  go  on,  theirs  is  the 
blame. — VON  BETHMANN  HOLL- 
WEG. 


NOVELISTS  AND  THE  WAR 

"There  is  not  a  more  .  .  .  despised  animal  than  a  mere  au- 
thor. .  .  .  Your  opinion  is  honest,  you  will  say;  then  ten  to  one  it  is  not 
profitable.  It  is  at  any  rate  your  own.  So  much  the  worse:  for  then 
it  is- not  the  world's." — HAZLITT,  On  the  Aristocracy  of  Letters. 

From  divers  quarters  one  hears  grumblings  and  sneers  at 
the  intrusion  of  " novelists"  into  war  questions.  Mr.  Wells, 
Mr.  Shaw,  Mr.  Bennett,  Mr.  Jerome,  Mr.  Galsworthy, 
Mr.  Hall  Caine,  Mr.  Chesterton,  all  flourish  their  criticisms 
and  counsels  before  a  public  persuaded  that  its  newspapers 
should  only  be  written  by  hacks..  Few  people  seem  to  under- 
stand that  the  novelist  is — with  the  exception  of  the  Com- 
mander-in-Chief — the  most  important  person  for  the  con- 
duct of  a  war.  England  has  already  paid  dearly  enough 
for  her  distrust  of  the  "intellectual,"  but  when  even  Ger- 
many, which  has  so  marvellously  mobilized  her  men  of 
science,  has  forgotten  the  novelist,  how  can  we  expect 
happy-go-lucky  England  to  realize  that  without  a  novelist 
no  War  Cabinet  is  complete?  Pray  do  not  suspect  irony; 
some  covert  allusion  to  the  inferior  fiction  of  Official  Re- 
ports. The  argument  is  plain  and  straightforward.  War 
being  not  a  duel  of  guns  but  of  the  men  behind  the  guns 
and  of  the  people  behind  the  men,  it  follows  that,  however 
important  it  is  for  Governments  to  consult  the  expert  in 
explosives,  it  is  still  more  important  for  them  to  consult 
the  expert  in  psychology.  This  is  exactly  what  the  serious 
novelist  is — a  professor  of  human  nature.  His  books  are 
merely  applied  psychology,  none  the  less  science  because 

233 


234  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

it  is  entertainment.  Nobody  dissents  from  Pope's  dictum 
that 

"  The  proper  study  of  mankind  is  man." 

yet  an  authority  upon  man — his  habits  and  ideas,  his 
taboos  and  fetiches — ranks  as  a  scientist  below  a  Fabre 
who  studies  insects,  even  when,  like  Swift,  he  labors  to 
show  man  quite  as  mean  as  the  insect. 

It  is  true  Mr.  Belloc  has  an  eager  following,  but  this  is 
because  of  his  scrupulously  stony  avoidance  of  the  flesh- 
and-blood  aspect  of  war,  for  he  discourses  exclusively, 
like  "my  uncle  Toby,"  of  sectors  and  salients,  of  envelop- 
ments and  objectives  and  Polish  triangles,  presumably 
to  cover  up  his  past  as  a  novelist. 

To  the  novelist  human  and  unashamed  the  strategy  of 
war  is  not  so  fascinating  as  its  psychology,  as  its  patho- 
logical problems.  There  is,  for  example,  the  phenome- 
non of  "double  personality,"  first  diagnosed  by  Steven- 
son in  his  classical  treatise  on  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr.  Hyde. 
Under  the  contagion  of  the  crowd,  aided  by  alcohol, 1 
a  modern  civilized  man,  even  a  professor  of  ethics,  can,  it 
appears,  pass  into  "the  fighting  state"  of  a  primitive 
savage.  The  admirable  Dr.  Jekyll  had,  according  to  Ste- 
venson, increasing  difficulty  in  dispossessing  the  deplorable 
Mr.  Hyde  every  time  he  let  him  get  his  foot  in.  And  so  we 
find,  even  when  "the  fighting  state"  has  subsided,  that 

1  "The  Austrians,"  says  a  correspondent  of  the  Morning  Post  (February  8, 
1916),  writing  of  the  night  attacks  on  the  Corso,  "are  deprived  of  their 
allowance  of  water  during  the  day;  at  night  rum  is  served  out  to  the  thirsty 
men,  who  are  then  literally  driven  to  the  attack  in  close  formation,  and 
intoxicated.  .  .  .  Some  rum-sodden  Austrians  roll  down  the  mountain-side, 
too  intoxicated  to  keep  their  feet  in  the  charge!  Invariably,  the  prisoners 
fall  into  a  drunken  sleep,  and  next  morning  remember  nothing  of  their 
night's  adventures."  The  British  ration  of  rum  is  given  even  to  teetotalers, 
but  as  a  mere  tonic  before  the  charge.  According  to  the  newspapers  in 
March,  1916,  two  million  gallons  of  rum  had  been  purchased  for  the  army  so 
far  at  a  cost  of  £3  23,000.  The  Germans  are  said  to  give  ether. 


NOVELISTS   AND   THE   WAR  235 

an  officer  and  a  gentleman  will  write  home  that  his  "bag" 
of  Germans  was  so  many  brace.  Nevertheless  there  is 
reason  to  hope  that  with  the  complete  return  to  civil  con- 
ditions the  military  Hyde  disappears.  For  a  French 
manufacturer,  some  of  whose  employees  came  back  dis- 
abled, tells  me  that  they  have  liun  trou  dans  la  memoir  e" 
—a  hole  in  the  memory:  a  sense  only  of  some  unreal  night- 
mare. Reality  is  the  old  workshop.  As  the  deadly  poison- 
gas  of  the  Germans  may  be  got  by  decomposing  common 
salt,  so  the  common  man  may  be  decomposed  into  a  demon. 
But  he  returns  gladly  to  his  simple  table  self.  This  explains 
how  retired  majors  can  become  the  pious  pillars  of  our 
Southern  watering-places. 

Similar  decompositions  appear  to  be  wrought  by  war 
upon  the  stay-at-homes.  In  Germany  Eucken,  the  great 
spiritual  teacher,  defends  his  country's  crimes.  Britons, 
whose  proudest  boast  is  that  they  never  shall  be  slaves, 
vote  away  Parliament  and  Magna  Charta,  and  call  for 
bureaucracy  and  the  Censor.  Yet  psychology  bids  us  hope 
that,  with  the  ebbing  of  war,  Eucken  will  become  ethical 
again  and  Englishmen  re-anglicized,  though  whether  we  shall 
quite  slough  our  Hyde  is  a  subtle  question,  which  may  be 
recommended  to  the  disciples  of  Mr.  Henry  James. 

Absorbing  as  these  speculations  are,  they  must  yield 
place  to  the  practical  questions  of  the  war,  for  it  is  in  the 
handling  of  these  that  the  novelist  is  most  needed,  though 
least  in  request.  As  the  economist  advises  on  the  effect  of 
withdrawing  gold,  as  the  general  or  the  journalist  reports 
on  the  sort  of  shells  necessary,  so  the  novelist  should  advise 
the  Government  how  its  measures  will  affect  human  nature. 
Thus,  if  the  Germans  had  had  one  on  their  war  staff,  they 
would  never  have  invaded  Belgium  and  turned  England 
into  the  United  Kingdom  and  our  chaos  of  colonies  into 
the  British  Empire.  They  would  never  have  sunk  the 


236  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

Lusitania  and  lost  America,  or  executed  Nurse  Cavell  and 
created  infinitely  more  enemy  soldiers  than  she  rescued. 
We  often  hear  of  the  Machiavellian  methods  of  the  Ger- 
mans. But  Machiavelli  was  a  novelist  (he  wrote  Belphegor 
as  well  as  The  Prince),  and  Machiavelli  would  have  never 
let  them  in  for  blunders  like  that.  On  the  contrary,  he 
might  have  taught  them  (as  he  does  in  his  Discourses 
on  Titus  Livius)  "how  one  humane  act  availed  more  with 
the  men  of  Falerii  than  all  the  might  of  the  Roman  arms"; 
how  "cities  and  provinces  into  which  the  instruments 
and  engines  of  war,  with  every  other  violence  to  which  men 
resort,  have  failed  to  force  a  way,  may  be  thrown  open  to  a 
single  act  of  tenderness,  mercy,  chastity  or  generosity." 
It  is  the  moral  taught  by  the  novelist  ^Esop  in  his  story 
of  the  trial  of  strength  'twixt  the  wind  and  the  sun  to  divest 
the  traveller  of  his  cloak — the  finest  political  fable  ever 
written;  it  is  the  teaching  of  those  still  more  famous  Christ- 
mas stories,  likewise  in  Greek,  whose  paradoxology  pro- 
claims that  the  meek  shall  inherit  the  earth.  And  if  the 
Germans  would  have  gained  mightily  at  the  moment  by 
such  a  novelist  on  their  war-staff,  how  much  the  French 
and  British  may  have  lost  in  the  future  by  neglecting  to 
consult  a  novelist  before  using  colored  troops!  For  the 
effects  upon  the  whites,  and  the  after-effects  on  the  black, 
red,  and  yellow  majorities  of  the  world's  population,  re- 
quired the  gravest  expert  consideration  by  color  specialists 
as  well  as  by  general  practitioners  of  human  nature.  Rud- 
yard  Kipling  was  available  for  the  Hindoo  and  Pierre  Loti 
for  the  Senegalese,  but  I  doubt  if  either  was  called  in  by 
his  Government.  It  is  not  too  late,  however,  to  take  expert 
opinion  on  the  question  of  reprisals  for  the  Zeppelin  raids. 
Shall  we  avenge  our  slaughtered  babes  by  bombing  German 
babies?  The  answer  clearly  depends  upon  the  effect  on 
the  Germans.  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle  has  opined  that  it 


NOVELISTS  AND  THE  WAR  237 

would  serve  to  check  the  Zeppelins.  But  he  is  not  an  expert 
on  Prussian  psychology.  We  need  here  a  German  novelist 
—Dr.  Ewers,  for  example.  Perhaps,  in  the  difficulty  of 
communicating  with  the  enemy,  Mr.  Ford  Madox  Hueffer 
would  do.  And  he,  I  imagine,  would  testify  that  the  Prus- 
sians would  cheerfully  sacrifice  two  German  babies  to  blow 
up  one  British  brat.  Not  to  mention  that  their  Press 
Bureau  would  presently  prove  that  it  was  we  who  began 
this  massacre  of  innocents.  Personally  I  should  advise 
dropping  Dickens'  Christmas  Carol  on  undefended  Ger- 
man towns.  This  combined  demonstration  of  power  and 
forbearance  might  penetrate  even  the  hide  of  the  rhinoce- 
ros (or  should  it  be  Rhineoceros?). 

Nor  can  I  believe  that  the  Censorship  Bureau  is  as  ex- 
pertly run  by  nobodies  as  it  would  be  by  novelists.  These 
forty  blue-pencilling  gentlemen — forty  fooling  like  one — 
can  they  really  appraise  the  precise  effect,  say,  of  the 
repercussion  on  Russia  of  the  elimination  from  British 
journalism  of  everything  except  a  purring  satisfaction  with 
the  Russian  bureaucracy?  Does  it  really  tend  to  make  the 
Russian  people  more  anxious  for  victory? 

But  by  far  the  most  important  of  the  questions  that 
call  for  the  novelist  is  the  popular  demand  for  the  extirpa- 
tion of  Prussian  militarism  as  a  condition  precedent  to 
peace,  as  indeed  the  only  way  to  avoid  a  " premature" 
or  "an  inconclusive  peace."  Of  course,  if  this  means  root- 
ing out  the  Prussians,  it  is  a  military  question  on  which 
the  novelist  must  not  presume  to  offer  an  opinion,  and  if 
the  military  experts  assure  me  that  with  the  forces  at  our 
disposal,  and  despite  the  accessory  hordes  of  Austrians, 
Bulgarians,  and  Turks,  we  can  wipe  out  sixty-seven  millions 
of  the  stoutest  fighting  stock  on  earth,  or  at  least  render 
it  impotent  to  reproduce  its  martial  strain,  I  can  only  ex- 
press my  satisfaction.  But  if  it  means  that  we  are  to  force 


238  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

a  change  of  heart  upon  Germany,  so  that  she  purge  herself 
from  within  of  her  militarism,  then  as  a  novelist  I  must 
regretfully  report  that  this  can  never  be  done  by  castigation. 
For  in  order  that  the  chastised  party  may  be  converted  he 
must  be  conscious  of  his  guilt.  A  clerk  caught  forging, 
a  schoolboy  caught  cribbing,  may  draw  the  conclusion,  as 
they  writhe  under  the  judge  or  the  rod,  that  cheating  never 
prospers.  But  a  suffragette  caught  window-breaking  had 
a  feeling  of  injury,  not  guilt,  and  her  punishment  only 
enhanced  her  sense  of  saintliness.  Did  the  Germans  feel 
that  they  had  drowned  the  world  in  tears  and  blood  for 
mere  lust  of  domination,  then  punishment  would  seem  to 
them  a  righteous  nemesis  and  they  would  turn  from  their 
idolatry  of  force.  But  so  far  from  feeling  guilty  they  look 
upon  themselves  as  a  nation  of  martyrs:  holy  innocents 
assailed  by  a  combination  of  all  the  white  and  colored 
devils  of  the  world,  jealous  of  their  culture  and  their  com- 
merce. To  our  cry  of  "Prussian  militarism"  they  oppose 
"  British  navalism" — the  dictatorial  might  of  our  Grand 
Fleet,  with  its  2,300  subsidiary  vessels.  The  Bryce  Report 
on  Belgium  they  counter  with  equally  official  documents 
on  the  Russians  in  Poland  or  the  Turcos  in  France.  "  No  th- 
ing," says  the  Kolnische  Volkszeitung,  "can  ever  wash  out 
of  the  conscience  of  the  English  Government  the  war  with 
all  its  horrors,"  whilst  "the  case  for  Germany,"  according 
to  a  writer  in  the  Fatherland,  has  "the  grandeur  of  a  mighty 
crusade,  the  sanctification  of  a  sacrificial  cause,  the  glory 
of  a  vast  and  universal  ideal." 

Against  such  a  state  of  mind — aggravated  as  it  is  by 
Germany's  crafty  introduction  of  civilization  into  the 
conquered  parts  of  Russia — force  is  powerless.  The  more 
the  Germans  are  crushed,  the  more  holy  and  innocent  they 
will  feel,  the  more  sternly  they  will  brace  themselves  to 
build  up  their  army  afresh.  As  the  blood  of  the  martyrs 


NOVELISTS  AND   THE   WAR  239 

is  the  seed  of  the  Church,  so  punishment  would  only  be 
the  seed  of  a  new  and  still  mightier  Germany.  And  hence 
the  conversion  of  Christmas  1  to  Christianity,  by  consecrat- 
ing it  to  a  Conference  of  the  Belligerents  for  a  belated  peace, 
might  be  more  fatal  to  militarism  than  all  the  military 
victories  we  promise  ourselves. 

But  I  am  encroaching  upon  religion,  and  the  novelist — 
no  less  than  the  bishop — must  confine  himself  to  mundane 
considerations  when  he  touches  on  war.  He  has  not  even 
the  bishop's  privilege  of  blessing  the  war.  He  remains  a 
simple  student  of  its  psychology,  zealous  to  impart  his 
wisdom  at  his  country's  call. 

1  This  was  originally  published  in  the  Christmas  number  of  the  Herald  for 


WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME 

"  Give  me  the  clear  blue  sky  over  my  head,  and  the  green  turf  be- 
neath my  feet,  a  winding  road  before  me,  and  a  three  hours'  march  to 
dinner  .  .  .  and  to  be  known  by  no  other  name  than  the  Gentleman 
in  the  parlor." — HAZLITT. 

"How  do  I  get  to  Bourton-on-the-Hill?" 

The  brawny  farm-lounger  looked  at  me  with  an  ingratiat- 
ing smile. 

"How  much  will  you  give  me  to  tell  you?" 

I  was  taken  aback.  In  a  goodly  experience  of  tramping 
my  native  land  I  had  never  been  asked  for  money  before 
by  any  human  finger-post.  "You  surely  don't  want  to  be 
paid?"  I  gasped.  But  perhaps — I  was  thinking — so  con- 
torted a  route,  which  had  already  been  given  me  in  terms  of 
fish-ponds,  a  private  drive,  swans,  a  house  with  a  cupola, 
white  gates,  and  half-invisible  footpaths,  made  an  abnor- 
mal tax  upon  one's  instructor. 

"Why  not?"  he  answered  with  another  Alice-like  rep- 
artee. "I'm  a  stud-groom."  Ultimately — though  he 
never  learnt  my  name — he  turned  into  a  special  constable, 
who  had  been  trying  to  test  if  the  "German  spy"  thought 
the  information  worth  buying.  But  he  candidly  admitted 
he  did  not  see  the  military  advantage  to  the  invader  of 
learning  the  way  to  the  sleepy  Gloucester  village,  and  for 
the  excellent  chart  he  contributed  to  my  note-book  he 
refused  the  tip. 

Nearer  the  danger-zone  one  does  not  come  off  so  easily. 
On  the  East  Coast  I  have  fluttered  the  farmyards  and  sent 
the  ploughboys  speeding  for  miles  on  their  cycles  to  the 

240 


WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME  241 

nearest  police  station.  "They  says  you  were  looking 
round,"  explained  the  panting  Dogberry  as  he  demanded 
my  papers.  The  West  Coast  is  only  less  vigilant.  "  Be  you 
a  German  spy,  zur?"  anxiously  asked  a  raw  recruit,  com- 
mencing sentinel. 

"Medio  tutissimus  ibis" — keep  to  the  Middle  Coun- 
ties— is  my  advice  to  the  knights  of  the  knapsack.  In  the 
more  military  areas  it  is  terrifying — and  illuminating — to 
mark  how  everything  can  be  transformed  under  espionitis. 
Walking  slowly,  you  are  spying;  briskly,  you  are  fleeing. 
To  tie  your  shoestring  near  a  bridge,  viaduct,  or  culvert  is 
absolutely  prohibited  by  the  Defence  of  the  Realm  Act. 
Asking  the  way  is  suspicious,  knowing  it  still  more  so.  Con- 
sulting your  road-map  is  flagrantly  hostile,  taking  a  nature- 
note  treasonable.  A  book  is  a  code,  a  manuscript  a  report, 
a  sketch  a  chart,  accounts  statistics,  a  scrawl  a  cypher,  an 
electric  torch  a  wireless  installation,  a  Kodak  death  and 
damnation.  Your  haversack  holds  bombs,  your  card-case 
somebody  else's  cards;  your  very  passport  is  no  proof  you 
have  not  murdered  the  owner.  A  beard  is  glaringly  false: 
beardlessness  a  shaven  mask.  If  your  purse  is  full  it  is  with 
the  wages  of  Judas,  if  you  have  but  little  money  you  are 
doubtless  out  to  make  it.  To  tender  gold  is  to  damage 
British  credit;  your  paper  is  probably  forged.  Gossiping 
with  the  cottagers  is  extracting  information,  giving  pennies 
to  their  children  is  bribery  and  corruption.  To  smoke  is  to 
reek  of  the  Fatherland,  to  eschew  tobacco  the  last  sacrifice 
of  the  Prussian  patriot,  to  light  your  pipe  at  night  is  to 
escort  a  Zeppelin.  Is  your  name  as  Saxon  as  Alfred  or 
Athelstan — it  is  clearly  assumed.  Does  it  begin  with  a  Z? 
You  are  obviously  the  cousin  of  a  notorious  Count.  You 
may  not  whistle — that  is  a  call;  nor  sing — for  that  is  a 
password.  If  you  look  up  you  are  awaiting  airmen  and  if 
you  look  down  you  are  avoiding  men's  eyes;  as  for  looking 


242  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

round,  we  have  seen  what  comes  of  that.  Blowing  your 
nose  you  are  signalling  with  a  handkerchief;  swinging  your 
stick,  you  are  a  semaphore;  feeding  pigeons  may  bring  you 
to  the  gallows.  Quaffing  at  the  village  pump,  you  are 
pumping  it  on  the  water  supply.  Conversing  with  the 
village  idiot,  you  are  in  the  Intelligence  Department  of 
B  erlin .  Quoting  your  newspaper,  you  are  probably ' '  spread- 
ing a  false  report."  Rambling  idly,  you  may  be  coming  too 
near  a  "specified  area"  or  you  may  be  out  at  too  late  an 
hour  without  a  permit  in  writing.  Who  knows  that  the 
bun  that  bulges  your  pocket  is  not  a  bomb?  Particularly 
parlous  is  it  to  telephone :  to  telegraph  requires  an  arduous 
avoidance  of  dangerous  ambiguities.  "Back  to-night. 
Don't  wait  up"  is  clearly  a  warning  to  submarines.  "Tell 
Willy  all  is  arranged"  may  be  a  message  to  one's  Imperial 
master.  "Please  return  to  London  and  let  the  matter 
drop"  is  an  unmistakable  instruction  to  Zeppelins.  To 
refer  to  Burns  or  Shelley  would  be  fatal. 

But  even  in  the  hub  of  England,  far  from  military  or 
naval  bases  or  buzzing  bombardiers,  the  amateur  tramp 
finds  himself  begirt  by  novel  conditions.  The  professional 
tramp  has  vanished  from  the  roads,  whether  from  the 
difficulty  of  pitching  a  plausible  tale  of  out-of-work,  whether 
because,  like  the  criminal  proper,  he  has  enlisted.  Soldiers 
jostle  you  at  every  turn — some  superb  types  of  manhood, 
bronzed  and  stalwart,  others  pitiably  puny  and  puerile.1 
The  horizon  is  clouded  with  khaki,  if  not  with  majors — 
khaki  strolling,  khaki  galloping,  khaki  cycling,  khaki 
motor-cycling,  khaki  motoring,  khaki  driving  lorries.  It 
makes  day  bright  with  its  bugles  and  sleep  impossible  with 
its  munition  wagons.  It  fills  the  roads  with  dust  and  the 
inns  with  life.  It  crowds  the  bars,  absorbs  the  dining- 
tables,  occupies  the  beds,  congests  the  cathedrals.  There 

•  '• . .    '  l  See  Appendix,  p.  248. 


WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME  243 

never  was,  I  fancy,  such  a  "Merry  England."  The  war  is, 
after  all,  a  great  gay  adventure.  The  white  tents  gleam  in 
an  atmosphere  of  picnic.  Everywhere  tongues  clack, 
throats  sing,  bands  blare,  drinks  fizz,  billiard  balls  rattle. 
We  ought  to  invite  a  specially  conducted  party  of  real  Ger- 
man spies  to  see  " panic-stricken  Britain."  The  English 
may  take  their  pleasures  sadly:  they  certainly  take  their 
corpses  cheerfully.  But,  then,  true  religion  is  always 
joyous — and  the  real  religion  of  England,  as  of  most  coun- 
tries, is  patriotism.  Listening  to  the  preachers,  it  is  difficult 
to  escape  the  conviction  that  Christ  was  in  the  army  and 
the  Madonna  made  munitions. 

I  came  into  Winchester  of  a  Saturday  night  through  a 
swollen  but  sluggish  stream  of  soldiery,  that  overflowed  the 
High  Street.  A  rare  quadruped  tried  feebly  to  assert  its 
right  to  the  roadway:  one  saw  it  almost  whelmed  in  the 
yellow  flood.  It  was,  in  fact — that  night — 

"  Khaki,  khaki,  everywhere 
And  not  a  drop  to  drink." 

For  at  nine  the  bars  close:  even  for  the  civilian  in  his  own 
hotel — a  piece  of  the  Act  I  do  not  profess  to  understand,  but 
which  is  Solomon  and  Solon  combined  compared  with  the 
total  closing  of  lonely  roadside  inns  between  two  and  six. 
For  this  is  what  I  found  ten  long  miles  from  a  military 
camp.  Arriving  at  the  only  inn  for  some  hours,  after  toiling 
all  the  morning  in  the  hot  sun,  it  seemed  impossible  to  get 
even  bread  and  water.  " Closed  till  six"  announced  a  plac- 
ard, with  Prussian  firmness,  and  it  was  only  ten  minutes 
past  two.  Happily  the  English  are  not  yet  quite  Prussian — 
"verboten"  is  not  yet  an  ultimatum.  By  a  side-door  I 
managed  to  sidle  into  a  kitchen,  and  by  casuistry,  aided  by 
coins,  I  achieved  some  cheese-biscuits,  while  the  landlord, 
with  a  providential  inspiration,  suggested  that  cider  was 


244  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

"non-alcoholic."  Pleasant  and  popular  fiction.  But  why 
the  poor  pedestrian  should  be  starved  is  one  of  the  many 
mysteries  of  the  War  Office.  It  looks  as  if  the  Government 
had  fallen  in  with  the  degenerate  view  of  innkeepers  that 
their  business  is  to  provide  liquids  and  not  solids.  As  if  it 
were  not  a  sufficient  drawback  to  rural  Britain  that  bread 
and  cheese  is  your  only  pabulum. 

My  host,  for  once  afraid  I  might  not  be  a  German  spy, 
but  a  British  bloodhound  on  the  track  of  publicans  and 
sinners,  was  depressed  and  oracular.  He  was  a  long,  lean, 
untidy  man,  and  the  wisdom  of  the  War  Office  weighed  on 
him.  "  This  war  won't  finish  by  fighting,"  he  said  gloomily. 
"By  exhaustion." 

The  retreat  of  the  Russian  Steam-Roller  found  its  ex- 
planation at  the  mouth  of  another  bar-oracle.  "What  did 
you  expect?  You  can't  win  a  war  on  temperance!"  Ev- 
idently the  abolition  of  vodka  rankles  in  the  British  breast — 
the  Russian  Alliance  is  no  longer  above  criticism.  They  will 
be  touching  the  beer-barrel  next:  already,  indeed,  a  hand  has 
been  nearly  laid  on  its  sacred  staves.  That  British  beer 
would  win  over  lager  I  never  heard  doubted,  though  not  a 
few  sighed  for  the  end  of  the  war,  mainly  on  commercial 
grounds.  Thus  the  fishmonger  lamented  the  falling-ofl 
due  to  the  prodigal  leavings  of  the  billeted — the  whole 
town  fed  from  their  crumbs.  Thus  the  farmer  deplored  the 
loss  of  labor.  After  being  apprised  the  soldiers  might  be 
hired  for  agricultural  work,  he  had  wasted  a  week  in  corre- 
spondence, only  to  be  told — too  late — that  this  particular 
regiment  could  not  be  had.  (Laudation  of  the  War  Office 
may  be  heard  in  Heaven — I  have  never  come  across  it  on 
earth.)  But  there  were  not  wanting  buxom  landladies  with 
soft  hearts,  who  could  not  bear  to  see  the  young  fellows  go 
off — "and  come  back  their  own  skeletons."  The  only 
blood-lust  came  from  the  prosperous  classes,  from  elderly 


WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME  245 

civilians  comfortably  ensconced  in  central  British  boarding- 
houses.  These  were  all  resolved  to  fight  to  the  last  school- 
boy. Not  so  khaki.  It  was  frankly  bored.  "Fed  up!" 
said  an  officer,  formerly  of  the  Manchester  Cotton  Ex- 
change. "Nigh  a  twelvemonth  of  drill  and  not  yet  got  our 
real  rifles.  Conscription?  The  front  is  choked  with  men. 
Loth  to  return  to  indoor  work?  Don't  you  believe  it! 
Soldiering  is  beastly  dull." 

But  even  the  ubiquitous  khaki  could  not  really  produce 
the  impression  of  a  country  at  war.  In  the  towns  all  was 
bustle  and  life;  in  the  fields  and  woods  the  pomp  of  summer 
denied  death.  The  corn  grew  golden  in  the  meadows,  the 
great  sunny  sheep-dotted  spaces,  relieved  by  mellow  thatch 
and  tile  and  gray  church-tower,  drowsed  under  the  blue 
sky,  to  which  larks  rose,  chanting  the  paean  of  all  this  holy 
peace.  If  there  was  a  scarcity  of  labor,  it  only  added  to  the 
tranquillity;  if  I  saw  the  mistress  of  a  celebrated  school 
gleaning  in  her  own  meadow,  that  only  enhanced  the  idyll. 
The  appearance  of  a  war  correspondent  at  a  great  Midland 
pleasure-city,  with  films  from  the  front,  did  not  beguile  the 
Boanerges  of  the  boarding-houses  from  the  promenade 
concert.  Lolling  over  five  rows  of  stalls,  in  a  spacious 
solitude,  I  beheld  the  ruin  wrought  by  the  German  bombs. 
After  two  hours  of  pictorial  havoc  and  platform  indignation, 
it  required  an  effort  to  remember  that  British  bombs  are  not 
exactly  creative. 

THEATRICAL  WARFARE 

"To-morrow  night,"  said  the  Strolling  Player  in  a  breath- 
less gush,  "we  shall  perform  that  great  military  drama, 
played  throughout  the  entire  North  of  England,  called 
'Man  and  Wife/  and  showing  how  the  Englishwoman, 
married  to  a  German,  refused  to  betray  her  country.  We 


246  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

will  now  proceed  to  entertain  you  with  singing  and  dancing 
and  the  whole  will  conclude  with  the  screaming  farce  of 
'The  Doctor's  Visit.5"  It  was  at  Chipping  Campden, 
in  a  Portable  Repertory  Theatre,  pitched  in  a  field.  But, 
alas!  delectable  as  is  Chipping  Campden  and  the  archi- 
tecture thereof,  I  could  not  wait  for  the  great  war-drama, 
and  the  melodrama  which  began  the  bloated  programme — 
like  the  farce  which  wound  it  up — was  as  remote  from  the 
war  as  from  reality.  In  Turkey  they  have  proclaimed  a 
holy  war,  and  in  England  that  the  war  is  holy.  Yet  this  is 
what  we  chorused  with  shrieks  and  giggles,  in  the  heart  of 
England  and  nature — in  the  great  white  tent  under  the 
harvest  moon — 

"  She's  got  a  face  like  a  pork-pie  cut 

In  pieces 

With  creases: 
She  said,  '  Kiss  me,'  but 
I  cried  'Tut!  Tut!' 
Tooral,  looral,  lay! " 

It  is  perhaps  no  worse  than  in  London,  where  you  have 
to  pay  more  than  gd.  for  your  stall.  And  to  one  constantly 
depressed  by  our  theatrical  fare,  it  was  a  gleam  of  comfort 
to  come — in  a  suburb  of  Worcester — upon  a  cinema  ad- 
vertising "  William  Shakespeare,  the  Greatest  Work  of  the 
Age."  One  forgave  a  certain  confusion  between  the  great- 
ness of  Shakespeare  and  the  greatness  of  this  particular 
picture-drama.  But  it  was  disappointing  to  find  that  it 
turned  on  Shakespeare's  rise  to  fame  and  riches.  This  is 
indeed  a  British  Shakespeare,  by  no  means  the  one  made  in 
Germany.  Nevertheless  the  programme  opened  up  poetic 
vistas.  "Born  1564,  died  1661."  A  Shakespeare  of  97 
sets  one  dreaming.  What  might  the  hoary  Bard  of  Avon, 
not  have  given  us,  nonagenarian  Hamlets,  octogenarian 


WALKING  IN  WAR-TIME  247 

Othellos!  Alas!  the  printer  has  transposed  the  figures, 
and  1616  reminds  us  wistfully  of  the  tribute  that  was  to 
have  celebrated  the  third  centenary  of  his  passing — the 
homage  of  a  united  world.  Yes,  if  only  for  Shakespeare's 
sake,  we  must  get  the  war  over  by  1916. 


APPENDIX 

This  article,  with  its  one  word  on  the  puniness  of  some  of 
our  soldiers,  was  strangely  represented  by  an  hysterical  Amer- 
ican correspondent  as  sneering  at  the  army.  The  reference  to 
the  enlistment  of  criminals  was  taken  as  implying  that  all  re- 
cruits were  criminals!  Since  it  was  published,  both  Press  and 
Parliament  have  resounded  with  the  scandal  of  the  original 
recruiting  in  which  the  incredible  error  seems  to  have  been 
committed  of  paying  doctors  half-a-crown  for  each  man  they 
passed,  with  the  result  that  now  the  Government  is  seriously 
embarrassed  at  the  claim  for  pensions  on  the  part  of  many  in- 
valids who  only  joined  to  get  into  the  military  hospital  or  for 
a  rest-cure  or  the  pension.  On  the  appearance  of  the  attack 
upon  me,  an  Army  doctor  at  the  Aldershot  hospital  wrote  to 
me  a  report  of  the  "extraordinary  number  of  cases  of  tramps, 
lunatics,  and  incurables  recruited"  that  had  come  under  his 
own  treatment,  including  two  one-legged  men,  two  cases  of  ad- 
vanced cancer  of  the  stomach  (both  died  within  six  weeks  of 
enlistment,  and  one  had  a  tumor  visible  several  yards  off),  cases 
of  semi-blindness,  innumerable  cases  of  advanced  phthisis  (the 
patient  very  often  admitted  at  the  point  of  death),  "innumer- 
able cases  of  the  refuse  of  workhouse  infirmaries,  senile,  tooth- 
less and  decrepit  old  men,  who  enlist  as  forty-five,  are  really 
fifty-six  to  fifty-nine,  and  look  over  seventy."  These,  he  says, 
"die  off  like  flies  in  a  cold  snap."  "One  boy,"  he  adds,  "told 
me  that  he  had  been  three  times  in  a  sanatorium."  When  I 
reproached  him  for  now  giving  us  this  trouble,  he  retorted 
civilly,  "Sir,  I  know  that  very  well,  but  a  young  chap  can't 
walk  about  in  civilian  clothes  nowadays.  The  sergeants  make 
his  life  a  misery! "  He  was  right  and  I  begged  his  pardon! 

As  to  lunatics,  says  my  authority,  "it  appears  to  be  the  thing 
in  Ireland  to  get  the  family  idiot  into  the  Army  and  subse- 

248 


APPENDIX  249 

quently  to  protest  vehemently  he  is  the  sole  support."  Few 
of  these  cases  are  "dangerous"  but  they  are  in  some  cases  "quite 
unable  to  tell  their  names  and  are  found  wandering." 

"There  is  an  odd  and  sinister  significance,"  says  the  Observer, 
reviewing  Mr.  Holmes's  book  My  Police  Court  Friends  with 
the  Colors,  "  hi  the  fact  that  some  of  the  heroes  of  the  great  cam- 
paign have  made  their  only  previous  public  appearance  in  the 
police-court."  The  only  "sinister  significance"  is  the  stupidity 
of  society  in  having  so  mishandled  the  criminal,  who  is  like 
mud,  merely  "matter  in  the  wrong  place"  hi  our  civilization, 
but  whose  virtues  find  their  full  appraisal  in  the  fighting  line.  So 
too  France  has  now  extracted  heroic  service  from  the  youth  of 
her  Penitentiary  Colonies. 

"When  the  enterprising  burglar's  not  a-burgling"  he  is  throw- 
ing bombs  in  Flanders,  and  receiving  stolen  property  from  the 
Huns,  it  appears  from  the  Daily  News  (December  17,  1915), 
which  gives  us  also  a  pleasing  picture  of  the  Central  Criminal 
Court,  which  had  just  finished  the  shortest  session  on  record. 
The  Judge's  Court — the  famous  No.  i — had  been  previously 
closed  for  some  days.  According  to  the  Times  the  decrease  in 
crime  has  brought  about  a  reduction  in  the  prison  estimates  of 
£100,000,  and  a  score  of  jails  have  been  closed  wholly  or  in 
part.  "Judges,"  said  Mr.  Justice  Horridge  at  the  Notts  Assizes, 
"go  from  place  to  place,  finding  little  or  no  crime  to  deal  with." 


ON  CATCHING  UP  A  LIE 

I  owe  to  the  courtesy  of  an  evening  paper  the  opportunity 
of  scotching  further — killed  it  never  can  be — the  lie  circu- 
lated by  a  New  York  correspondent  of  a  Sunday  paper  that 
I  had  "sold  and  published"  a  two-column  sneer  at  the 
British  Army  in  a  great  "pro-German"  American  paper, 
stabbing  my  country,  so  to  speak,  in  the  back,  and  in  the 
dark,  and  for  thirty  pieces  of  silver.  When  I  say  that  the 
"pro-German"  paper  has  published  an  attack  from  my  pen 
on  Prussian  militarism,  and  publishes  every  week  an  article 
by  Mr.  G.  K.  Chesterton  as  well  as  many  from  Kipling, 
Belloc,  and  that  the  article  now  indicted  appeared  simul- 
taneously in  the  Daily  Chronicle  (to  an  unqualified  chorus 
of  approval),  and  that  so  far  from  sneering  at  the  British 
Army  it  is  to  be  given  in  French  by  the  Revise  de  France  to 
amuse  our  Ally,  it  will  be  seen  that  the  libel  was  tolerably 
complete. 

And  yet,  as  I  have  said,  it  bears  a  charmed  life.  It  has 
set  out  round  the  world,1  and — with  a  week's  start — can 
never  be  overtaken.  In  vain  the  Sunday  paper  has  expressed 
its  regret;  its  readers  are  not  observers.  Some  will  have 
seen  the  lie  and  not  the  contradiction,  others  the  contra- 
diction and  not  the  libel.  I  did  not  even  see  it  myself, 
though  I  glanced  through  the  paper  for  the  more  official 
war-lies,  and  though  it  was  headed  in  large  capitals:  "Why 
is  Mr.  Zangwill  Allowed?"  (The  answer  to  Brudder  Bones 
is,  I  suppose,  "Because  he  will  not  be  silent.") 

My  first  intimation  of  the  libel  came  from  a  neighbor 
1 1  last  met  it  in  a  great  Australian  newspaper. 
250 


ON  CATCHING  UP  A  LIE  251 

and  of  its  seriousness  from  a  dismayed  friend  who  wrote: 
"I  hear  that  at  the  dinner  that  was  given  to  Beerbohm 
Tree  last  night  it  was  the  subject  of  a  good  deal  of  disagree- 
able talk."  That  great  British  actor  having  sailed  for  the 
States  before  the  falsehood  was  exposed,  we  perceive  how 
the  seed  of  error  might  be  indefinitely  and  innocently  scat- 
tered. Nothing  would  surprise  me  less,  if  the  next  time  I 
have  a  piece  at  a  theatre  a  gentleman  in  the  gallery  hisses 
to  avenge  England — to  the  great  relief  of  the  critics,  thus 
given  a  cue  for  their  aesthetic  principles.  It  is  true  the 
Sunday  paper  has  asked  the  journals  that  copied  its  accu- 
sation to  copy  its  correction.  But  few  will  do  anything 
so  foolish,  and  even  legal  compulsion  cannot  extend  to 
the  withdrawal  of  statements  of  my  demerits,  which  are 
not  necessarily  untrue  because  I  omitted  to  sneer  at  the 
British  Army.  Why  should  these  journals  withdraw  their 
whips  and  scorpions  merely  because  there  was  no  crime  to 
chastise?  If  I  know  newspaper  nature,  they  will  not,  and 
the  only  journal  I  have  looked  into  bears  out  my  foresight, 
for  it  corrects  its  account  but  not  its  abuse.  Nor  will  the 
anonymous  patriots  who  obscenely  reviled  my  race  on 
postcards  now  write  to  congratulate  me  on  it. 

No;  a  lie  once  loosed  is  a  mephitic  vapor  that,  unlike 
the  Arabian  jinn,  can  never  be  got  back  into  its  bottle. 

But  how  came  the  journalist  to  loose  the  lie? 

He  was  suffering,  I  take  it,  from  pro-Germania — a  malady 
akin  to  that  diagnosed  in  my  very  article  as  espionitis. 
The  unhappy  victim  scents  pro-Germanism  in  every  writer 
who  deviates  by  a  hair-breadth  from  the  stupidest  view  of 
the  greatest  number.  And  if  to  loathe  Prussia  and  all  her 
works;  if  to  watch  with  patriotic  grief  the  Prussianizing  of 
England;  if  to  dread — as  I  see  Magna  Charta,  Parliament, 
the  Press,  all  her  great  historic  landmarks,  disappearing — 
that  our  young  men  who  have  gone  out  to  fight  for  Eng- 


252  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

land  will  find  no  England  to  return  to;  if  to  hold  that  the 
duty  of  us  who  are  beyond  the  age  for  foreign  service  is  to  go 
to  the  front  for  the  defence  of  England  against  her  home- 
born  Huns,  and  to  preserve  England  for  her  absent  sons;  if 
this  be  pro- Germanism,  then  I  must  assuredly  be  written 
down  a  pro- German! 

But  it  is  not  even  necessary  to  watch  over  England — the 
simplest  guardianship  of  reason,  of  justice,  of  the  sense  of 
humor,  is  pro-German:  as  if  to  the  diseased  logic  of  the 
afflicted  patriot,  reason,  justice,  and  humor  were  German! 
Breathe  one  syllable  suggesting  that  France,  Russia,  Bel- 
gium, Italy,  Serbia,  Montenegro,  or  Japan  (with  power  to 
add  to  their  number)  are  not  academies  of  archangels, 
and  you  are  equally  pro-German.  There  was  a  moment — 
with  Bulgaria  balancing — when  Sofia  too  was  a  holy  city, 
though  finally  Tzar  Ferdinand  had  a  Jewish  nose.  Who 
would  dare  to  say  to-day  what  the  Westminster  said  then 
— that  Bulgaria  was  the  great  peasant  democracy?  That 
would  be  pro-German. 

Fairness,  in  short,  is  the  mark  of  the  beast.  My  libellist 
confesses  it  openly.  "A  judicial  frame  of  mind"  he  classes 
under  "German  propaganda."  The  Americans  do  not 
understand  it,  this  "Observer"  tells  us.  "To  be  fair  to  an 
opponent  argues  weakness  in  one's  own  case."  What  a 
standard ! , 

The  true  British  patriot  must  assert  that  the  German 
gray  is  jet-black  and  the  British  Gray  snow-white.  I  fear 
color-blindness  is  not  my  forte.  But  I  thought  if  there  was 
one  thing  John  Bull  prided  himself  on  it  was  fairness.  Does 
the  ideal  hold  good  then  only  for  sport?  Is  it  unimportant 
that  a  thing  is  "not  cricket"  the  moment  the  thing  is  im- 
portant? My  wise  woman  writes  to  me:  "We  have  be- 
fogged ourselves  with  talk  of  our  Governing  Class  instead 
of  asking  ourselves  if  they  could  really  govern,  and  have 


ON  CATCHING  UP  A   LIE  253 

prattled  about  the  Traditions  of  our  Public  Schools  instead 
of  asking  if  the  traditions  of  schoolboys  were  the  last  word 
necessary  in  conducting  modern  life."  Let  us  at  least  not 
throw  away  the  one  jewelled  word  in  their  traditions, 
Fairplay,  when  we  have  to  face  adult  problems,  issues 
affecting  the  whole  future  of  humanity! 

Where  was  our  Public  School  tradition  when  our  scien- 
tists and  scholars  shamelessly  turned  and  rent  German 
scholarship  and  science,  to  which  they  had  all  their  lives 
paid  homage?  Was  it  " cricket"  when  we  hastened  to 
anticipate  with  jeers  and  accusations  of  theatricality  the 
Kaiser's  rumored  design  to  re-create  the  kingdom  of  Poland, 
though  we  had  made  the  welkin  ring  with  cheers  for  the 
Tzar's  precisely  identical  proposal?  Why  make  Turkey's 
German  ally  responsible  for  the  Armenian  massacres, 
which  she  could  have  stopped  by  a  word,  but  hold  England 
blameless  for  Russia's  anti- Jewish  pogroms? 

It  is  true  the  Germans  have  not  " played  the  game" 
either,  have  indeed  played  it  foully,  opening  up  still  lower 
circles  in  the  Inferno  of  war.  But  this  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  copy  their  spiritual  poison-gas,  however  the 
devil  of  military  necessity  drive  us  to  copy  their  chlorine. 
What  military  advantage  is  there  in  denying  their  achieve- 
ments, caricaturing  their  motives,  and  embellishing  our 
own? 

This  is  the  true  "fog  of  war" — that  we  no  longer  see 
each  other,  that  we  hack  blindly  in  the  dark  at  the  mon- 
strous images  we  have  made  of  each  other.  The  German 
crimes  are  largely  the  outcome  of  an  inhuman  logic  pushed 
to  extremes  by  a  panic  fear,1  and  the  bulk  of  the  Germans 

1  "  It  was  fear,  not  ambition,  that  had  led  even  pacifist  Germans  to  support 
the  present  war"  (Presidential  Address  of  the  Headmasters'  Association, 
January  4,  1916.)  This  fear  was  largely  due  to  Mr.  Asquith's  formula,  of  an 
apparent  intransigence  unknown  since  Cato.  The  Germans,  having  no 
humor,  have  failed  to  note  that  the  House  of  Lords  still  exists,  and  has  even 


254  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

are  no  more  responsible  for  them  than  you  or  I  for  the 
deaths  in  the  Dardanelles.  When  we  last  caught  sight  of 
their  faces — on  Christmas  Eve  in  the  trenches — what  was 
there  but  the  lineaments  of  our  common,  our  poor,  pitiful 
humanity? 

served  as  a  Radical  check  upon  Asquith's  autocracy,  meeting  when  the 
House  of  Commons  was  holiday-making. 


PATRIOTISM  AND  PERCENTAGE 

"Patriotism  is  the  last  refuge  of  a  Tariff-Reformer." —  DR.  JOHNSON 
(with  apologies). 

(Originally  published  in  1904) 

Readers  who  merely  desire  to  beguile  a  tedious  air- 
journey,  no  less  than  serious  students  of  history,  may  be 
safely  counselled  to  procure  Li  Hang  Li's  new  work,  Sixty 
Celestial  Centuries,  for  our  accomplished  academician  is 
never  dull,  not  even  for  a  century.  Peculiarly  suggestive 
are  the  early  chapters  in  which  he  recounts  the  Tariff  War 
provoked  by  the  Lord  Chamberlain  of  England  (thereafter 
known  as  the  Lord  Protector),  and  traces  the  inevitable 
rise  of  China,  as  the  greatest  collection  of  customers  the 
world  had  ever  seen,  to  the  hegemony  of  the  competing 
tradespeoples.  Now  that  mankind  is  peacefully  gathered 
under  the  great  Chinese  umbrella,  there  is  a  fascination 
in  reviewing  these 

"  Old  unhappy  far-off  things, 
And  battles  long  ago," 

and  for  the  literary  antiquarian  the  pensive  pleasure  is 
enhanced  when  he  lights  upon  such  a  passage  as  that  in 
which  Li  Hang  Li  tells  how  the  War  of  Tariffs  was  carried 
into  the  domain  of  the  spirit.  It  would  appear  that  the 
Lord  Chamberlain  (or  Jo)  was  not  actually  first  in  the 
field,  though  his  Tyrtaean  speeches  practically  operated 
as  a  heavy  tax  upon  the  patience  of  other  peoples.  The 
first  tangible  blow  in  that  long  campaign  which  devastated 

255 


256  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

the  mediaeval  world,  was  struck  by  the  Monroe  States  of 
North  and  South  America,  already  armed  with  a  crippling 
duty  on  foreign  works  of  art,  calculated  to  protect  the 
American  citizen  against  the  influences  of  Beauty,  and 
with  a  formidable  Copyright  Law,  by  which  only  the  strong- 
est exotic  authors  could  achieve  entry.  The  blow  was  as 
cunning  as  it  was  crushing.  A  sudden  and  simple  extension 
was  given  to  the  Law  totally  prohibiting  the  importation  of 
contract-labor,  and  all  foreign  actors  and  theatrical  troupes 
were  turned  back  at  the  Custom  House.  Sara  Bernhardt 
and  Mrs.  Siddons,  David  Garrick  and  Sir  Charles  Wynd- 
ham,  Coquelin  and  Moliere,  Duse  and  Blondin,  all — says 
Li  Hang  Li — were  treated  with  impartial  injustice,  and 
after  a  few  days  of  detention  on  Ellis  Island  were  shipped 
back  to  their  homes,  sandwiched  between  emigrants  re- 
jected for  having  come  with  a  labor-contract,  and  emigrants 
rejected  for  having  come  without  any  prospect  of  one. 
The  closing  of  American  ports  to  these  celebrities  was 
naturally  accompanied  by  the  vigorous  manufacture  of 
native  talent.  A  host  of  Press-agents  arose  of  unparalleled 
activity  and  imagination,  and  soon  the  home-market  was 
stocked  with  autocthonous  tragedians  and  comedians  of 
the  highest  brands.  The  fall  in  the  price  of  theatre  tickets 
that  followed  was  a  complete  exposure  of  the  Free  Trade 
fallacy,  the  consumer  actually  paying  less  for  his  celebri- 
ties. It  is  true  that  the  American  theatrical  archives  seem 
to  chronicle  the  subsequent  performances  of  a  number  of 
English  actors,  and  more  particularly  English  actresses, 
but  these,  as  Li  Hang  Li  surmises,  may  have  entered  un- 
taxed,  under  the  head  of  raw  material.  So  successful  was 
this  measure  that  it  was  extended  to  musicians,  and  even 
to  preachers  and  lecturers,  and  as  these  rejected  immigrants 
were  one  and  all  repatriated  at  the  expense  of  the  Shipping 
Companies,  a  new  terror  was  added  to  the  Atlantic  by  the 


PATRIOTISM  AND  PERCENTAGE  257 

Company's  Inspector.  The  examination  of  the  passengers 
for  any  trace  of  genius  proved  an  irksome  preliminary  to 
the  purchase  of  tickets.  Harmless  old  cheesemongers  with 
prophetic  beards  were  kept  back  on  suspicion;  respectable 
widows  with  dyed  hair  were  refused  cabins  as  Tragic  Muses; 
while  a  Cockney  accent  and  diamonds  were  sufficient  to 
discredit  an  innocent  barmaid  as  a  comedienne.  In  the 
European  panic  that  followed  this  Draconian  enactment — a 
panic  especially  severe  in  Bohemia — many  artists,  Italian 
and  Polish,  no  less  than  Bohemian,  mostly  singers,  pianists, 
and  fiddlers,  declared  themselves  of  American  birth,  and 
passed  triumphantly  through  the  barrier.  Their  triumph, 
however,  was  of  short  duration;  for  their  foreign  names 
had  been  confiscated  at  the  Custom  House,  and  this  loss 
of  reputation  left  them  performing  to  empty  benches.  A 
famous  pianist,  who  had  smuggled  himself  in  by  having 
his  hair  cut,  found  his  audience  melting  away  as  he  played, 
unable  to  penetrate  through  his  disguise. 

The  Retaliation  policy  of  Europe  was  prompt  but  for 
the  most  part  inefficacious.  England's  exclusion  of  Ameri- 
can spelling  was  evaded  by  the  printing  of  an  Encyclopaedia 
Britannica  from  old  British  plates.  The  impost  upon  the 
cake-walk  in  France  was  a  negligible  source  of  revenue 
outside  Paris.  More  galling  was  the  heavy  duty  levied  by 
Germany  upon  Transatlantic  reputations,  forty  per  cent 
being  deducted  from  the  scholars,  and  fifty  from  the  soldiers. 
But  the  crushing  ad  valorem  duty  imposed  by  the  Conti- 
nental Zollverein  upon  English  editions  of  Baedeker  served 
mainly  to  benefit  Italy,  as  the  country  most  overrun  by 
the  American  tourist.  It  says  much  for  the  anti-American 
ardor  of  Britain,  that  she  should  have  consented  to  a  tax 
that  pressed  so  hardly  upon  her  own  pilgrims;  but  the 
mediaeval  Briton  never  seems  to  have  minded  cutting  off 
his  nose  in  the  interests  of  universal  ugliness.  As  Li  Hang 


258  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

Li  pithily  remarks,  the  Bull  in  a  China  shop  ever  does 
more  damage  to  others  than  good  to  himself.  These  Euro- 
pean reprisals  but  provoked  an  American  embargo  upon 
foreign  plays,  and  by  the  aid  of  a  Bounty  indigenous  Ibsens 
and  home-grown  Hauptmanns  were  fostered,  and  a  goodly 
crop  of  gloomy  dramas  was  produced,  which,  although 
exported  to  Japan  under  a  preferential  tariff,  seem  to  have 
mainly  returned  with  a  drawback.  It  is  interesting  to 
learn  that  exception  was  everywhere  made  in  favor  of 
Musical  Comedies,  respecting  which — as  a  necessity  of 
Life — all  mediaeval  nations  appear  to  have  practiced  Reci- 
procity. 

The  exclusion  of  European  novels  followed  in  natural 
sequence,  whether  in  their  own  tongues  or  in  American. 
Even  pirated  editions  no  longer  had  the  protection  of  the 
American  law.  The  great  gain  in  public  decency  that 
ensued  led  to  the  prohibition  of  non-American  characters 
in  native  work. 

The  selection  of  Paris  or  Florence  as  the  scene  of  action 
for  American  heroines  was  likewise  prohibited  to  the  native 
novelist,  even  when  he  lived  in  Europe,  and  all  bookstores 
hiving  such  hybrid  fiction  were  liable  to  be  raided  by  the 
police.  The  French  accent  was  forbidden  in  quotations 
in  Congress,  and  World  Fairs  were  abolished  in  favor  of 
Pan-American  Exhibitions.  These  statesmanlike  measures 
served  to  fan  the  feeble  spark  of  American  self-conscious- 
ness, and  to  nurse  the  young  patriotism  to  a  less  apologetic 
assertiveness. 

The  over-production  of  local  color,  and  the  glut  in  his- 
toric romance,  were  but  temporary  evils  of  the  home  mar- 
ket, due  to  the  action  of  Publishing  Trusts,  and  the  exporta- 
tion to  the  new  markets  in  Cuba  and  the  Philippines  served 
to  relieve  the  congestion.  It  was  in  vain  that  England 
retaliated  by  prohibiting  American  humor;  it  was  cabled 


PATRIOTISM  AND   PERCENTAGE  259 

over  as  news,  and  even  penetrated  as  after-dinner  speeches. 
Beaten  in  the  battle  of  the  books,  England  fell  back  on 
forbidding  the  entry  of  American  heiresses  into  the  peerage. 
This  feeble  and  irrelevant  measure  had  an  unexpected 
consequence.  The  Monroe  States  discovered  that  they 
could  manufacture  their  own  peers,  at  far  less  cost  and 
with  the  latest  improvements.  Dukes  and  Earls  were 
turned  out  at  Washington,  and  polished  at  a  culture- 
factory  in  the  suburbs  of  Boston.  They  were  in  high  de- 
mand for  home  consumption,  and  the  output  could  hardly 
keep  pace  with  the  orders  from  Chicago  and  San  Francisco. 
But  to  follow  the  learned  Li  Hang  Li  into  this  section  of  his 
history  would  take  me  too  far.  I  wish,  however,  I  had 
space  to  quote  from  his  chapter  on  "The  Corner  in  Counts." 
I  have  been  reading  another  of  Li  Hang  Li's  fascinating 
chapters  on  mediaeval  history.  The  author  of  Sixty  Celestial 
Centuries  is  at  his  profoundest  in  dealing  with  the  curious 
confusion  of  thought  and  life  which  characterized  the 
Western  world  at  the  period  of  the  first  Russo-Japanese 
war.  The  Flowery  Philosopher  draws  an  instructive 
parallel  between  that  self-contradictory  century  and  the 
early  centuries  of  the  Christian  Church,  when  the  European 
barbarians,  lacking  the  consistent  doctrine  of  Confucius, 
found  themselves  torn  between  two  opposite  teachings, 
the  ancient  militarism  and  the  new  gospel  of  turning  the 
other  cheek.  It  needed,  he  points  out,  all  the  ingenuity 
of  the  Fathers,  to  reconcile  Bloodshed  and  Brotherhood, 
and  in  the  last  extremity  the  Church  was  compelled  to  de- 
mand penance  from  those  who  had  murdered,  even  for  the 
highest  objects  and  in  the  most  glittering  costumes.  The 
contradiction  of  Church  and  Camp  lost  its  acuteness  with 
the  habit  of  the  ages,  and  ended — says  Li  Hang  Li — in 
Christianity  wearing  its  pigtail  both  in  front  and  behind 
without  any  sense  of  incongruity.  The  Church  blessed 


260  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

the  banners  of  the  departing  warriors,  and  even  the  lay 
world  grew  to  think  that  it  was  only  for  the  extension  of 
Christianity  that  wars  were  ever  waged  at  all. 

But  scarcely  had  custom  dulled  the  edge  of  this  incon- 
sistency, says  our  historian,  when  another  self-contradiction 
began  to  grow  glaring.  A  greater  force  than  Christianity 
had  arisen  to  divide  the  human  heart  against  itself — the 
force  of  Percentage.  Poor  weltering  barbarians — Li  Hang 
Li  pauses  to  meditate — we  Chinese  were  feeble  and  en- 
gaged in  washing  the  dirty  linen  of  the  West,  but  at  least 
we  were  spared  those  internal  contradictions  which  dis- 
tract the  soul  of  a  people  and  render  it  incapable  of  philo- 
sophic fruits. 

At  first  it  looked,  indeed,  as  if  the  development  of  inter- 
national finance  and  the  Joint-Stock  Company  was  making 
uninterruptedly  for  the  abolition  of  war  and  would  bring 
to  the  rest  of  the  world  the  brotherhood  already  established 
among  a  third  of  its  inhabitants — the  four  hundred  mil- 
lions of  our  mediaeval  China.  It  seemed  as  if  the  profits 
might  succeed  where  the  prophets  had  failed.  The  Hebrew 
Bible — which  was  read  on  Sundays  when  the  barbarians 
reposed  themselves  from  life — had  predicted  that  mankind 
would  beat  their  swords  into  ploughshares.  What  seemed 
more  imminent  was  their  beating  them  into  Bourse  shares. 
There  was  no  nation  which  did  not  take  the  kindliest 
interest  in  the  concerns  of  every  other.  Was  there  a  coun- 
try in  need  of  a  railway?  The  whole  Western  world  co- 
operated to  build  it.  Not  alone  the  rich,  but  the  smallest 
tradespeople  hastened  to  contribute  their  oboli  to  the 
good  work.  Widows  gave  their  mites,  orphans — with  a 
filial  piety  almost  Chinese — threw  upon  the  treasure-heap 
the  savings  of  their  fathers'  lifetimes.  Clergymen,  for  once 
collaborating  in  the  work  of  peace  and  good-will,  were  the 
keenest  to  assist  in  these  international  operations.  These 


PATRIOTISM  AND  PERCENTAGE  261 

brotherly  societies  built  harbors  where  there  had  been  only 
rocks;  they  irrigated  lands  where  only  weeds  had  thriven, 
and  called  into  being  new  and  flourishing  communities. 
No  soil  was  too  remote,  no  people  too  alien  for  the  workings 
of  this  cosmopolitan  beneficence.  No  territory  so  barren 
but  the  human  brotherhood  was  ready  to  rush  to  its  help, 
train  its  people,  develop  its  industries  and  its  commerce, 
insure  it  against  fire,  provide  it  with  every  necessity  and 
educate  it  to  every  luxury.  Such  was  the  state  of  mind  to 
which  the  West  had  advanced  in  its  slow  progression  toward 
our  Eastern  perfection.  The  ancient  attitude  of  being 
hostile  to  every  other  country,  envious  of  every  other  Power, 
seemed  outgrown  and  obsolete,  and  all  men  appeared  to 
seek  their  own  good  in  all  mankind's.  Humanity  bade  fair 
to  be  finally  united  by  Bonds  issued  at  five  per  cent. 

But  alas!  these  barbarians  were  still  savages,  and  the  old 
ideals  persisted.  Like  a  sloughing  snake,  the  West  lay 
sickening:  the  new  skin  of  commercialism  only  half  put 
forth,  the  old  skin  of  militarism  only  half  put  off.  A  truly 
piebald  monster,  this  boasted  civilization  of  theirs.  On  the 
one  hand  a  federation  of  peoples  eagerly  strengthening  one 
another,  on  the  other  hand  packs  of  peoples  jealously 
snapping  at  one  another.  A  sextet  of  nations  styling  them- 
selves Great  Powers,  all  with  vast  capitals  invested  in 
developing  one  another's  resources,  were  yet  feverishly 
occupied  in  watching  and  cramping  the  faintest  extension 
of  one  another's  dominions.  A  more  ironic  situation  had 
never  been  presented  in  human  history,  not  even  when 
Christianity  was  at  its  apogee.  For  whereas,  says  Li 
Hang  Li,  in  the  contest  between  church  and  camp,  it  was 
simple  enough  to  shelve  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  in  the 
contest  between  commerce  and  camp,  both  factors  were  of 
equal  vitality  and  insistence.  The  results  of  this  shock  of 
opposite  forces  of  development  were  paradoxical,  farcical 


262  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

even.  In  the  ancient  world  there  has  been  the  same  struggle 
for  supremacy,  but  the  Babylonians  or  the  Egyptians  did 
not  build  up  each  other's  greatness.  The  Romans  did  not 
lend  money  to  the  Carthaginians,  nor  did  Hannibal  sell 
the  Romans  elephants.  But  in  this  era  the  nations  fought 
by  taking  up  one  another's  war  loans.  In  lulls  of  peace  they 
built  for  one  another  the  ships  they  would  presently  be 
bombarding  one  another  with.1  The  ancient  mistress  of 
the  world  never  developed  a  country  till  it  belonged  to 
Rome.  The  mediaeval  rival  mistresses  were  all  engaged  in 
developing  countries  which  belonged  to  their  rivals  or  to 
which  they  might  one  day  themselves  belong.  In  brief, 
two  threads  of  social  evolution  had  got  tangled  up  and  tied 
into  a  knot  so  that  neither  thread  could  be  followed  clearly. 
It  was  death  to  give  away  your  country's  fortifications  to 
another  country,  but  an  easy  life  to  contribute  to  the 
strengthening  of  the  other  country's  fortifications — at  a 
percentage.  It  was  high  treason  to  help  the  enemy  in  war- 
time, but  you  could  sell  him  your  deadliest  inventions  if 
your  government  offered  less  or  waved  you  aside.  And  you 
could  manufacture  those  weapons  and  export  them  to  the 
enemy  by  the  million  so  long  as  he  had  not  given  you  notice 
that  he  was  going  to  fight  you  next  week.  Quite  often  a 
nation  was  hoist  with  its  own  petard.2  And  no  sooner  had 
you  devastated  your  enemy's  country  than  you  lent  him 
money  to  build  it  all  up  again.  In  vain  shells  hissed  and 
dynamite  exploded.  The  stockbroker  followed  ever  on  the 

1  According  to  Lloyd's  Register,  there  were  at  the  end  of  September,  1912, 
twelve  foreign  warships,  amounting  to  117,650  tons,  under  construction  in 
British  yards. 

2  Literally  true  for  Russia,  which  was,  according  to  General  Polivanoff, 
the  War  Minister,  dependent  upon  Germany  for  shells  and  other  munitions. 
At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  we,  too,  were  dependent  on  enemy  countries  for 
electrical  apparatus,  field  glasses,  etc.,  while,  according  to  Sir  Edward 
Carson,  we  had  to  look  to  Austria  for  spare  gun  parts  and  accessories,  not  a 
single  one  of  which  had  been  made  in  England. 


PATRIOTISM  AND  PERCENTAGE  263 

heels  of  the  soldier  and  the  grass  of  new  life  (and  new  loans) 
sprang  up  over  the  blackened  ruins.  Indeed,  nations  in- 
stead of  being  extinguished  in  the  struggle  for  political 
existence,  because  they  were  too  weak  to  pay  their  debts, 
had  to  be  kept  artificially  alive  in  order  to  pay  them. 

And  not  only  was  it  permissible  to  arm  your  enemy  of 
to-morrow;  it  was  considered  exemplary  to  teach  him  the 
whole  art  of  war,  to  train  the  young  idea  how  to  shoot,  to 
familiarize  him  with  the  latest  instruments  and  the  most 
scientific  manoeuvres.  It  was  thus  that  the  unthinking 
West  equipped  Japan  with  the  thunderbolts  destined  to 
recoil  upon  Europe's  own  head. 

The  sage  here  refers  the  reader  to  the  fiscal  chapter  from 
which  I  have  already  quoted,  and  remarks  that  even  the 
Lord  Chamberlain  of  England,  the  notorious  Lord  Pro- 
tector, in  his  plea  for  the  splendid  isolation  of  his  country, 
did  not  extend  his  political  insight  to  the  underlying  in- 
ternational threads  which,  by  linking  stock  exchange  with 
stock  exchange,  were  making  isolation  impossible.  So  long 
as  Britons  insisted  on  using  their  savings,  not  for  the  de- 
velopment of  home  industries,  but  for  furthering  every  sort 
of  foreign  enterprise,  taxation  on  foreign  products  did  but 
little  to  redress  the  balance  in  favor  of  their  own  country. 
With  one  hand  they  were  crippling  the  foreigner,  but  with 
the  other  they  were  propping  him  up.  With  the  right  hand 
they  waved  the  Union  Jack,  with  the  left  they  pocketed 
the  foreign  dividends.  Had  the  Lord  Chamberlain  been 
logical  he  would  have  appealed  to  his  countrymen  not  only 
to  pay  more  for  their  food  and  manufactures  in  the  larger 
interests  of  Empire,  but  to  draw  less  from  their  investments. 
He  seems  to  have  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that  who  sups  with  the 
Tzar  must  have  a  long  spoon,  but  this  apprehension  of 
Russia's  designs  was  not  accompanied  by  a  warning  to  his 
countrymen  to  desist  from  collaborating  in  them.  A  con- 


264  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

sis  tent  Chamberlain  would  have  said:  "Let  no  Anglo- 
Saxon  collaborate  in  the  Trans-Siberian  railway,  whether 
as  shareholder  or  engineer,  and  whosoever  buys  Russian 
bonds  is  a  traitor  to  Britain.  Take  only  South  African 
shares,  howsoever  swindling.  In  view,  too,  of  the  dangerous 
potentialities  of  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  let  every  good 
patriot  sell  out  his  American  stock,  nor  help  to  capitalize 
and  foster  the  Power  which  may  one  day  turn  and  rend  us." 
But  these  considerations,  observes  Li  Hang  Li,  obvious 
as  they  appear  to  us  to-day,  were  hidden  from  even  the 
most  sagacious  of  mediaeval  mandarins,  and  it  was  they 
and  their  purblind  percentage-hunting  people  who  awak- 
ened in  China  the  sleeping  Dragon  that  was  to  swallow 
them  all. 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  CHURCHES 

"  L'Europe  fut  nn  champ  de  massacre  et  d'horreur: 
Et  Porthodoxie  meme,  aveugle  en  sa  fureur, 
De  tes  dogmes  trompeurs  nourissant  son  idee, 
OubKa  la  douceur  aux  Chretiens  commandee, 
Et  crut,  pour  venger  Dieu  de  ses  fiers  ennemis, 
Tout  ce  que  Dieu  defend  16gitime  et  permis." — BOELEAU. 


If  a  man  could  be  drained  of  his  blood,  and  yet  go  about 
with  every  vital  function  absolutely  unimpaired,  if  a 
motor-car  could  be  eviscerated  of  its  valves  and  cylinders 
and  yet  whiz  along  exactly  as  before,  if  an  eagle  could 
have  its  pinions  amputated  and  yet  sail  aloft  into  the  em- 
pyraean  as  superbly  as  ever,  we  should  come  to  the  conclu- 
sion that  the  blood,  the  machinery,  the  wings,  played  no 
real  part  in  the  life  of  the  man,  the  car,  the  bird,  but  were 
mere  ornamental  appendages.  And  since,  were  Chris- 
tianity now  abolished  and  exiled  by  the  Defence  of  the 
Realm  Act,  there  would  be  no  difference  whatever  visible 
in  the  functioning  of  the  State  and  the  prosecution  of  the 
war,1  can  we  escape  a  similar  conclusion  about  the  Church? 

Some  of  its  best  sons  do  not  think  so.  "War  being  a 
survival  .of  barbarism,"  writes  the  Bishop  of  Hereford, 
"is  essentially  opposed  to  the  spirit  of  Christ."  (Times, 
January  24,  1916.)  "At  the  outbreak  of  the  war,"  says  the 

1  An  anonymous  printed  postcard  asking  me  to  help  stop  the  war  "for  the 
sake  of  Jesus  Christ"  is  the  only  reminder  I  have  personally  had  that  I  am 
living  in  a  New  Testament  country — a  fact  which  just  before  the  war  was 
daily  impressed  on  my  consciousness  by  the  Kikuyu  controversy. 

265 


266  THE   WAR  TOR  THE   WORLD 

Dean  of  Durham,  "men  awoke  to  the  discovery  that  Chris- 
tendom was  really  swayed  by  motives  which  had  no  pre- 
tence of  being  Christian,  and  that  the  Churches  had  be- 
come parasitic,  bestowing  their  facile  consecrations  on 
every  national  ambition  and  failing  to  rebuke  any  national 
crime."  (The  Faith  and  the  War,  Macmillan.)  "The 
message  of  Christ  to  the  nations,"  says  the  Dean  of  St. 
Paul's  in  the  same  volume,  "has  never  been  accepted  in 
practice  and  seldom  even  understood.  .  .  .  The  record 
of  organized  Christianity  in  promoting  peace  and  goodwill 
among  the  nations  is  not  an  inspiriting  one."  Even  quite 
commonplace  Christians  appear  to  have  reached  the  same 
conclusion,  for  according  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  preach- 
ing at  Chiswick  (January  23,  1916):  "From  end  to  end  of 
England  we  find  people  who  at  the  bottom  of  their  hearts 
have  grown  to  believe — although  they  are  afraid  to  admit 
it — that  the  war  was  the  absolute  breakdown  of  Chris- 
tianity." 

Now  with  the  whole  of  Europe  honeycombed  by  institu- 
tions for  the  gospel  of  non-resistance,  this  is  a  serious, 
awkward  and  portentous  situation,  auguring  possibly  a 
transformation  in  the  religious  ideas  of  Christendom. 
Well  may  the  Dean  of  Durham  anticipate  that  "of  all  the 
national  institutions,  the  Churches  will,  perhaps,  be  the 
most  severely  criticised,  and  the  most  sternly  handled." 
Already  Mr.  Galsworthy  has  announced  that  the  old 
mystical  Christianity  is  dead.  Let  me  say  at  once  that  I 
agree  rather  with  the  Dean  of  St.  Paul's.  "It  is  nonsense 
to  talk  of  the  failure  of  Christianity  when  Christianity  has 
never  been  tried."  1 

lThe  Pope's  pathetically  ineffective  protest  against  "the  suicide  of 
Europe"  is  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  his  position  and  of  Roman  Cathol- 
icism. The  attempt  of  Cardinal  Bourne  to  ascribe  the  war  to  the  rise  of 
Protestantism  and  Rationalism  is  grotesque.  (Pastoral  Letter  sent,  1916.) 
As  if  before  the  sixteenth  century  lay  the  Golden  Agel  Dr.  William  Barry 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  CHURCHES  267 

II 

Not  content  with  the  passive  contradiction  between 
Rule,  Britannia  and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  the 
Church  has  not  infrequently  become  a  political  platform 
for  speeding  up  the  war.  Thus,  even  in  the  Intercessory 
Services  of  the  New  Year,  the  Bishop  of  Carlisle  dealt  with 
the  lack  of  patriotism  of  the  industrial  and  other  classes, 
the  Dean  of  Durham  emphasized  the  need  of  civilian  sacri- 
fice, the  new  Master  of  the  Temple  attributed  our  failure 
to  our  contempt  for  education,  Dr.  F.  B.  Meyer,  for  the 
Free  Churches,  suggested  a  Commission  to  enquire  into 
the  sources  of  moral  and  religious  decay,  and  Canon  E.  H. 
Pearce,  speaking  at  Westminster  Abbey,  deprecated  criti- 
cism of  the  Ministry  or  the  Grand  Fleet.  And  if  a  rare 
cleric — like  the  Headmaster  of  Eton — tries  timidly  to  sug- 
gest that  clinging  to  Gibraltar  is  not  precisely  identical 
with  clinging  to  the  Rock  of  Ages,  the  howl  that  goes  up 
is  a  prompt  reminder  that  the  Church  exists  only  on  suf- 
ferance. No  wonder  it  has  abounded  in  these  "  facile  con- 
secrations" of  which  the  Dean  of  Durham  speaks.  No 
wonder  the  Church  has  always  made  religion  a  branch  of 
politics,  instead  of  making  politics  a  branch  of  religion. 

And  with  the  pulpit  thus  turned  into  a  platform,  the 
transition  to  a  recruiting  station  was  simple.  Every  church 
had  become  one,  Mr.  Snowden  complained  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  and  indeed  special  appeals  for  recruits  were  read 
both  in  the  Free  and  the  Established  Churches.  Nor  has  the 
patriotism  of  the  clergy  been  merely  vicarious.  As  was  once 
said  of  Archbishop  Trench,  the  heart  of  the  soldier  beat  un- 

also  regards  the  war  as  "a  lesson  for  agnostics,"  and  a  writer  (M)  in  the 
Manchester  Guardian  blames  with  equal  absurdity  the  intellectual  levity  of 
our  generation.  In  truth  war-lust,  like  sex-lust,  precedes  faith  or  philosophy. 
Apparently  in  France  the  war  is  strengthening  Catholicism;  in  reality  it  is 
only  strengthening  the  paganism  of  national  religion. 


268  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

der  the  cassock  of  the  priest,  and  not  content  with  risking 
their  lives  as  chaplains,  many  ministers  have  gone  to  the 
trenches  as  fighters.  Though  even  Parliament  felt  it  scanda- 
lous to  conscript  clergymen,  they  themselves  were  restive 
under  episcopal  veto  and  many  petitioned  for  its  removal. 
Their  sons,  at  any  rate,  have  hastened  to  the  front  and  have 
died — the  Bishop  of  Sheffield  tells  us — in  a  higher  ratio  than 
the  sons  of  any  other  class,  thirteen  sons  of  Bishops  alone 
perishing  up  to  the  end  of  last  year.  No  wonder,  if,  as 
Coleridge  wrote  "in  April,  1798,  during  the  alarm  of  an 
invasion:" 

"The  sweet  words 

Of  Christian  promise,  words  that  even  yet 
Might  stem  destruction  were  they  wisely  preached, 
Are  muttered  o'er  by  men,  whose  tones  proclaim 
How  flat  and  wearisome  they  feel  their  trade." 

In  Germany  we  even  hear  of  rosaries  whose  beads  are  toy 
shells  and  cartridges,  while  the  military  authorities  are 
considering  the  possibility  of  using  church  bells  for  making 
sheUs. 

And  apart  from  everywhere  blessing  the  war,  the  Church 
has  nowhere  intervened  to  modify  its  abominations  or 
misalliances  except,  of  course,  when  committed  by  the 
enemy.  No  German  pulpit  has  castigated  the  sinking  of 
the  Lusitania,  and  in  England  the  debate  on  "air  reprisals" 
has  been  left  almost  exclusively  to  laymen.  A  few  odd 
and  obscure  clergymen,  like  the  Rev.  F.  C.  Davies  of 
Enfield,  have  preached  Pacifist  doctrine,  but  the  only 
Christian  sect  that  has  given  a  sign  of  life  is  that  which 
dispenses  with  clergymen.  But  even  the  young  Quakers 
have  gone  out  to  the  front  as  ambulance-men  or  com- 
promised as  mine-sweepers;  indeed,  many  appear  to  have 
become  actual  fighters.  No  wonder  the  Daily  Express 


THE   WAR  AND   THE  CHURCHES  269 

denounces  in  flaring  humorless  headlines  "A  Peace  Crank 
Church."  l 

III 

While  the  bulk  of  the  Church  seems  blind  to  this  glaring 
discrepancy  between  precept  and  practice,  or  at  least  to  be 
using  that  third  eyelid  which  as  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
pointed  out,  excludes  not  all  light  but  just  as  much  as  it 
is  wished  to  exclude — one  is  comforted  to  find  from  the 
volume  already  quoted  that  the  Church  possesses  a  mi- 
nority which  is  not  afraid  to  look  facts  in  the  face.  This 
collection  of  independent  essays  by  members  of  the  Council 
of  the  Church  Union,  is  one  of  the  most  significant  symp- 
toms of  Christian  vitality  that  I  have  come  across  for  years. 
It  confronts  with  courage  and  heterodoxy  the  fearful 
problems  raised  by  the  war.  In  Catholicism  the  Modernist 
wing  has  been  crushed :  whether  it  will  carry  Protestantism 
remains  to  be  seen. 

The  bulk  of  the  volume  does  not  indeed  concern  the 
central  Christian  problem  of  non-resistance:  it  is  occupied 
or  pre-occupied  with  problems,  which  belong  equally  to 
Judaism  or  religion  generally,  which  indeed  have  no  special 
reason  for  being  debated  now  except  that  the  levity  of 
mankind  neglects  them  until  they  are  forced  in  gigantic 
contours  upon  its  consciousness.  Thus,  the  problems  of 
evil,  of  providence,  of  immortality,  belong  to  the  homespun 
of  daily  life.  Even  the  problem  of  war  faces  one  every  time 
one  opens  a  history  book.  If  God  and  War  cannot  be 
reconciled,  then  it  was  not  necessary  to  wait  till  August, 
1914,  to  become  an  atheist.  Voltaire  did  not  become  one, 
though  more  of  the  horrors  of  war  are  collected  in  a  chapter 
of  Candide  than  appeared  even  credible  before  to-day. 

1  In  "Holy  Russia"  twenty-seven  followers  of  Tolstoy,  including  a  Jew, 
have  been  court-martialled  for  issuing  a  pamphlet  with  the  new-fangled 
doctrine  "Thou  shalt  not  kill."  They  were,  however,  acquitted. 


270  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

And  the  reconciliation  of  Christianity  with  War  is  equally 
a  problem  of  the  past.  But  for  the  man  in  the  street  these 
problems  are  practically  novel,  and  particularly  is  he 
struck  by  the  flagrant  contradiction  between  the  teaching 
of  Christ  and  the  Great  War  in  which  so  many  Christian 
nations  are  fighting  one  another,  while  Germany  lacks 
even  the  minor  alleviation  of  fighting  the  Turk — nay,  is 
found  fighting  like  a  fiend,  while  the  Paynim  fights  like  a 
gentleman. 

IV 

Neglecting,  therefore,  all  the  other  theological  problems 
of  the  war,  which  are  common  to  all  religions,  and  limiting 
ourselves  to  the  single  point  of  its  inconsistency  with  the 
Gospel  doctrine  of  non-resistance,  we  find  the  more  con- 
scious part  of  the  Church  provided  with  only  too  many 
solutions.  The  Founder  spoke  with  Oriental  hyperbole. 
Or  He  did  not  really  forbid  fighting.  Or  if  He  did,  not  fight- 
ing in  self-defence,  still  less  for  the  defence  of  others,  nor 
can  we  suddenly  apply  an  ideal  for  which  the  past  has  not 
prepared.  Or  even  if  war  is  unchristian  its  results  may  be 
Christian,  both  directly  by  suppressing  wickedness  and 
indirectly  by  improving  the  soldiers  and  the  nation. 

The  proofs  that  the  Master  did  not  really  forbid  fighting 
are  equally  varied.  The  doctrine  of  turning  the  other 
cheek  referred  only  to  private  frictions.  Living  in  a  small 
State  under  the  pax  romana,  He  "neither  directly  contem- 
plated nor  provided  for"  a  Christianity  divided  by  inde- 
pendent nationalities.  (Cyril  William  Emmet,  Ethics  of  the 
New  Testament.)  Or  if  He  did  foresee  it,  he  would  not 
spare  His  followers  the  responsibility  of  applying  His 
spirit  to  modern  politics.  (Ibid.)  Or  he  expected  the  end 
of  the  world  soon,  so  that  non-resistance  was  merely  what 
the  German  theologians  call  an  "Interimsethik,"  a  code 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  CHURCHES  271 

for  the  interval.  (Ibid.}  Or  Englishmen  and  the  English 
nation  are  two  distinct  things  and  it  is  therefore  sophistic 
of  Dr.  Lyttelton  to  argue  that  because  England  is  a  Chris- 
tian nation  therefore  English  men  are  debarred  from  fight- 
ing. (A  delightfully  Hibernian  refutation  of  sophistry  upon 
which  Mr.  Glazebrook,  Chairman  of  the  Churchmen's 
Union,  is  to  be  congratulated.) 

As  for  the  legitimacy  of  self-defence,  it  is  difficult  to 
disagree  with  the  divine  who  writes :  "If  anyone  is  attacked 
on  four  sides  and  defends  his  life,  he  acts  in  self-defence 
and  fulfils  a  Christian  duty."  Unfortunately  the  argument 
comes  from  Dr.  Dryander,  the  German  Court  Chaplain, 
who  adds:  "We  are  in  this  position."  l  That  the  indirect 
effects  of  war  may  be  Christian  is  a  favorite  apologia. 
Think  of  the  Christianity  that  lies  in  offering  yourself  as  a 
target  in  the  trenches.  "Greater  love  hath  no  man  than 
this  that  a  man  lay  down  his  life  for  his  friends."  Think, 
too,  how  the  spiritual  life  is  quickened  in  a  man  constantly 
on  the  brink  of  death.  Think,  too,  of  the  uplifting  of  the 
civilian  population.  The  Rev.  Dimsdale  Young  (Ex- 
President  of  the  Wesleyan  Conference)  boldly  expressed  his 
belief  that  Christianity  had  gained  greatly  by  the  war.  In 
particular  immortality  was  now  the  leading  light  of  man. 
More  boldly  still  the  war  in  its  direct  effects  has  been  made 
synonymous  with  Christianity.  A  war  against  militarism 
—nay,  to  kill  war  itself — is  precisely  what  the  Prince  of 
Peace  wishes.  It  is  a  holy  war.  It  is  the  via  dolorosa  to 
the  Millennium.  "We  and  our  Allies  believe,"  said  the 
Bishop  of  Norwich,  "that  we  are  fighting  to  maintain  the 
cause  of  Christ."2  Less  diffidently,  "It  is  God's  war," 

1  Eucken's  view  is  that  the  world  is  not  yet  ready  for  the  pure  milk  of 
human  kindness  and  that  Luther  had  to  countenance  war. 

*  "We  are  waging  a  war  for  Christianity  itself,"  said  the  German  Pastor 
Dorrfuss.  See  "The  War  for  the  Words." 


272  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

cried  the  Bishop  of  London,  in  his  New  Year's  diocesan 
letter.  And  while  the  principal  of  a  Baptist  College  in 
the  North  of  England  maintained  that  relentless  war  was 
our  present  supreme  duty,  Archdeacon  Wilberforce,  Chap- 
lain of  the  House  of  Commons,  did  not  hesitate  to  say, 
"the  killing  of  the  Germans  is  a  Divine  service  in  the  fullest 
sense  of  the  term" — a  view  of  course  absolutely  paralleled  in 
the  book  circulated  among  soldiers  by  the  German  chaplain 
Schettler  which  teaches  that  "to  bayonet  the  enemy  and 
smash  in  his  skull  is  God's  service"  (Quoted  in  the  Lower 
House  of  the  Prussian  Diet  by  the  Socialist,  Herr  Hoffmann.) 
"  Love  itself  may  demand  repression  of  crime  among  indi- 
viduals or  nations,"  urges  Principal  Garvie. 

The  war  being  thus  pre-eminently  Christian,  the  Church 
is  as  qualified  to  denounce  "a  premature  peace"  as  any  of 
the  rumbustious  patriots  who  break  up  the  Elian  quiet  of 
Quaker  Meetings  by  howling  down  St.  Paul.  "Anything 
in  such  a  war  is  better  than  a  premature  peace,"  declared 
the  Bishop  of  London.1  And  the  Archbishop  of  Canter- 
bury actually  refused  to  sign  a  proposed  appeal  of  Christian 
Churches  for  an  early  peace.  The  Church  has  not  yet  gone 
so  far  as  to  endorse  the  rumbustious  version  of  the  Beati- 
tude, Cursed  be  the  Peacemakers,  for  they  shall  be  called 
pro-Germans.  But  it  has  not  shrunk  from  suggesting — 
through  the  Bishop  of  Chelmsford 2 — that  now  that  colored 
blood  and  Christian  blood  have  flowed  together  in  the 

1  In  checking  the  ardor  of  his  junior  clergy  to  do  war  work  or  even  to 
fight,  the  Bishop  remarked  naively  that  if  the  clergy  gave  the  impression 
they  regarded  physical  force  as  alone  effective  "it  would  either  shock  the 
consciences  or  lower  the  ideals  of  the  laity." 

2  This  Bishop  has,  however,  some  bold  sayings  to  his  credit,  reminding 
the  world  of  the  old  sins  of  Russia  and  Belgium  and  urging,  "We  must 
cleanse  England  before  God  will  come  down  off  the  fence  on  our  side."    A 
conscientious  objector  in  his  diocese,  however  (at  Bradford),  was  regarded 
by  the  chairman  of  the  appeal  board  as  "blasphemous"  for  saying  that  "the 
war  is  God's  judgment  on  sinning  nations." 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  CHURCHES          273 

same  cause,  England  owes  it  to  these  benighted  heathen  to 
bring  them  to  baptism.  I  trust  that  at  least  the  Society 
for  the  Conversion  of  the  Jews  will  have  the  grace  or  the 
humor  to  cease  from  troubling  just  now.  That  is  a  War 
Economy  I  can  cordially  recommend  to  the  Society  and 
its  supporters.1 

V 

Nothing  marks  the  movement  of  modern  thought  more 
significantly  than  that  the  Church  has  now  practically 
lost  its  ancient  repugnance  to  blood,  just  as  it  abandoned 
its  ancient  objection  to  interest.  In  France  there  are  20,000 
soldier  priests.  In  England  the  Bishop  of  Bangor  seems  to 
have  been  alone  in  recalling  clearly  to  the  priest  panting  for 
the  fray  that  "shedding  blood  is  and  has  been  everywhere 
at  all  times  considered  contrary  to  the  Law  of  the  Church 
and  an  offence  to  the  conscience  of  Christian  men." 2  Even 
the  Bishop  of  Hereford  was  content  to  point  to  the  remedial 
rear  of  an  army  as  the  more  appropriate  place  for  a  minister 
of  the  Gospel.  Though  the  Archbishop  of  Canterbury 
admitted  in  the  House  of  Lords  that  "the  technical  law 
of  the  Church  forbade  the  shedding  of  blood  by  those 
in  holy  orders,"  he  preferred  to  rest  the  case  for  non- 
conscription  of  clerics  on  other  grounds,  and  he  said  the 
ordination  candidates  of  the  Church  of  England  have 
"come  forward"  splendidly.3  And  the  tradition  thus 

1  A  German  Theologian  (Joseph  Schmidlin)  laments  that  the  war  has 
divided  British  and  German  missionaries  in  their  African  work  and  that 
German  missionaries  are  in  concentration  camps  in  India. 

2  Of  thirty-two  theological  colleges  and  hostels  hi  the  Church  of  England 
nine  are  closed — there  are  some  340  students  as  against  1258  normally. 
Roman  Catholic  and  Jewish  priests  and  students  are  exempt,  though  the 
Chief  Rabbi  has  annulled  the  Mosaic  Law  prohibiting  "Cohanim"  (the 
priestly  tribe)  from  being  near  the  dead. 

*  "None  fight  better  for  the  King  than  we  do," said  Origen,  apparently  con- 
sidering "Orare  est  pugnare."  Christ  wants  more  of  this  sort  of  fighting, 


274  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

abandoned  is  older  than  the  texts  for  non-resistance.  David 
was  not  allowed  to  build  God's  Temple  because  he  had 
been  a  warrior;  Solomon  was  forbidden  to  use  iron  tools 
in  its  structure  because  they  were  associated  with  blood- 
shed, and  it  was  in  pursuance  of  this  tradition  and  not  on 
account  of  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  that  the  mediaeval 
Church  instituted  a  service  of  expiation  for  soldiers,  and 
with  a  grim  humorlessness  burnt  its  heretics  to  avoid 
shedding  their  blood,  while  forbidding  its  priests  to  practice 
harmless  necessary  surgery.  If  the  surrender  of  such 
quibbles  and  tortuosities  leaves  the  Church  to  face  the 
naked  facts  of  life,  it  is  a  manlier  Church  that  accepts  war 
as  a  high  tragedy,  which,  no  less  than  a  stage  tragedy,  may 
be  a  purgation  by  pity  and  terror.  But  a  manlier  Church 
is  not  necessarily  a  more  Christian  Church.  When  the 
child  of  a  friend  of  mine,  hearing  that  some  soldiers  had 
shot  and  killed  a  soldier  of  another  nation,  enquired  in 
incredulous  horror,  "But  didn't  they  know  he  was  there?  " 
those  infant  lips  reduced  to  nought  all  the  eloquence  of 
the  Bishops.  Verily,  "except  ye  be  converted  and  become 
as  little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven."  x 

VI 

If,  as  one  born  unburdened  by  the  apostolic  paradoxes 
that  embarrass  the  Bishops,  I  might  venture  to  give  them 
ghostly  counsel,  I  would  begin  by  remarking  that  if  the 
Church  now  finds  itself  in  an  incongruous  position  it  has 
only  itself  to  blame  for  neglecting  the  path  of  silence  and 

according  to  Father  Vaughan  who  says  our  business  is  to  keep  on  killing 
Germans  and  regarded  the  success  of  a  Conference  on  "The  Call  of  the  War 
to  Prayer"  as  "a  pat  on  the  back  from  our  blessed  Lord."  Sunday  labor  in 
making  munitions  has  been  nowhere  denounced. 

1  Somewhat  belatedly,  but  in  noble  language,  the  Bishop  of  Lincoln  pro- 
tested against  the  unconscientious  treatment  of  the  conscientious  objector. 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   CHURCHES  275 

peace  pointed  out  by  the  Master.  "  Render  unto  Caesar  the 
things  that  are  Caesar's"  is  surely  a  sign-post  showing  the 
way  out  for  the  Church,  when  it  confronts  what  it  can  neither 
countenance  nor  cure.  The  Church  is  not  a  political  plat- 
form. One  does  not  go  to  an  Abbey  or  a  Cathedral  to  hear 
speeches  or  newspaper  articles.  The  Church  should  have 
remained  a  centre  of  beauty  and  prayer  and  hallowed  quiet, 
of  great  literature  and  noble  music,  a  balm  to  the  wounded 
spirit,  an  anodyne,  a  counteractive,  a  reminder  of  realities 
no  less  substantial  than  the  war;  of  the  good  that  may  yet 
— despite  the  howlers-down  of  St.  Paul — overcome  evil. 
The  Church  should  have  communed  with  its  own  heart  and 
been  still.  " Things  without  remedy,"  said  Lady  Macbeth, 
"  should  be  without  regard."  l  To  those  who  brought  it  the 
problem  of  their  conscience — should  they  fight? — the  answer 
was  the  same.  "Render  unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's."  Every  citizen  must  fight — unless  not  to  fight  is 
even  more  dangerous.  Martyrdom  was  ever  the  Christian's 
privilege  and  zeal. 

With  the  results  of  the  fight  the  Church  as  such  is  not 
concerned.  Jesus  did  not  win.  Providence  is  on  the  side 
of  the  biggest  battalions,  for  it  would  be  an  unjust  Provi- 
dence that  refused  to  give  even  the  devil  his  due.  On  the 
plane  of  physical  force,  the  greatest  and  most  efficient  force 
will  always  win.  On  the  plane  of  spirit  physical  force  is  not 
so  much  impotent  as  irrelevant.  "Thou  hast  conquered, 
O  Galilaean"  was  not  a  surrender  to  physical  force.  And 

1  It  is  with  characteristic  Teutonic  thoroughness  that  the  Chrisiliche  Welt, 
the  leading  religious  organ  of  Germany,  demanded  "A  Moratorium  for 
Christianity."  To  preach  Christianity,  said  the  writer,  in  these  days  of 
torpedo  and  poison-gas  was  only  to  provoke  "mocking  hellish  laughter." 
Curiously  enough  the  Free  Church  Conference  imagined  that  all  that  the 
soldiers  would  be  finding  out  was  the  unreality  of  the  divisions  of  Christen- 
dom, because  of  all  the  chaplains  and  padres  having  comforted  one  an- 
other's flocks  in  the  hour  of  death. 


276  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

this  brings  me  to  the  crux  and  conclusion  of  the  whole 
matter. 

The  difficulties  of  the  Christian  Church  are  not  confined 
to  war-time.  They  are  perpetual  and  inherent.  They 
arise  from  its  being  the  Church  of  a  majority  and  from  try- 
ing in  war-time  to  be  everywhere  a  national  Church.  But 
Christianity  is  a  spirit,  not  an  institution,  and  that  spirit  the 
spirit  of  a  minority.  That  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  is 
impossible  as  the  basis  of  a  State  has  been  candidly  admitted 
by  high  ecclesiastical  authority.  But  it  was  never  meant 
to  be  nationalised.1  It  was  meant  to  be  the  inspiration 
of  a  few — the  salt  of  the  earth,  the  yeast  to  leaven  the  lump. 
Its  hyperbolism,  its  spiritual  extremism,  is  necessary  to 
offset  the  grossness  of  the  body  politic.  It  is  not  "  Interval 
Ethics,"  it  is  "  Minority  Ethics."  For  although  it  appeals 
to  all  mankind,  it  is  aware  that  only  the  elect  will  vibrate 
to  its  teaching. 

Christianity  cannot  "pay."  It  is  a  religion  for  losers. 
The  voice  crying  in  the  wilderness  can  never  receive  the  fee 
of  a  K.  C.  or  a  Cabinet  Minister.  The  attempt  to  fit  this 
tragic  universe  of  ours  into  a  comfortable  Church  establish- 
ment is  hopeless.  The  function  of  the  Christian  is  to  strug- 
gle and  suffer.  And  hence  in  every  great  crisis  the  real 
Christians  will  be  found  not  in  the  Church  but  outside  it. 
They  are  the  eternal  protestants  of  humanity  and  must 
in  every  age  be  crucified  for  its  salvation. 

1  The  Bishop  of  Carlisle  confessed  that  the  Church  is  more  Jewish  and 
Pagan  than  Christian,  but  he  does  not  seem  to  see  that  a  National  Faith 
cannot  be  otherwise. 


WRITTEN  BY  A  JEW  THIS  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"The  trenches  have  been  cautioned  this  year  against  a  Christmas 
truce."— Daily  Paper. 

11  When  we  beheld  thy  kingdom  come  on  earth, 
All  eyes  upstrained  to  thee,  all  knees  low-bent, 
Man  swathed  in  thee  as  in  an  element, 
Art,  Music,  Letters  circling  round  thy  birth, 
Bejewelled  Temples  blazoning  thy  worth, 
Jehovah  banished  to  our  nomad  tent — 
Then,  brother,  thee  enthroned,  with  bitter  mirth, 
We  left  and  on  our  thorny  way  we  went. 

"  But  now  that  once  again  we  see  thee  bleed, 
Deserted,  where  thy  worshippers  have  banned  thee, 
Thy  agony  is  ours,  thy  homeless  need — 
After  such  startling  glories  so  to  brand  thee! 
Dear  faulting  Jesu,  now  to  thine  own  seed, 
Creep  home  again — who  else  can  understand  thee?  " 


277 


MR.  MOREL  AND  THE  CONGO 

(SPEECH  AT  THE  CITY  TEMPLE,  2oth  October,  1910) 

"The  strongest  man  on  earth  is  he  who  stands  most  alone." — 
IBSEN:  An  Enemy  of  the  People. 

I  esteem  it  a  great  privilege  to  be  associated  with  this 
tribute  to  the  magnificent  work  of  Mr.  Morel.  For  unlike 
my  friend,  Sir  Arthur  Conan  Doyle,  I  have  no  peculiar 
claim  to  speak  on  the  crime  of  the  Congo.  Sir  Arthur  has 
devoted  himself  to  the  cause  of  the  oppressed  native  with 
the  quixotism  which  the  sight  of  injustice  always  awakens 
in  him:  he  has  written  a  book,  he  has  toured  the  country 
in  company  with  Mr.  Morel  to  arouse  public  opinion.  I, 
on  the  other  hand,  am  only  one  of  the  public  whose  opinion 
has  been  aroused  and  I  appear  here  at  the  penitent  form — 
if  the  expression  may  be  permitted  in  this  temple  of  the 
new  theology — to  express  my  shame  at  having  so  long  pas- 
sively connived  at  atrocities  for  which  every  British  citizen 
is  responsible  under  the  Berlin  treaty.  We  cannot  leave 
these  things,  it  would  seem,  to  our  professional  politicians. 
They  suffer  from  that  dread  Congolese  disease,  sleeping 
sickness.  Private  men  must  rush  forward  to  uplift  the  flag 
of  England's  honor  which  their  nerveless  fingers  have 
dropped  in  the  dust.  While  noble  lords  and  knights  pro- 
fess to  lead  us  along  the  paths  of  chivalry,  it  was  left  to  a 
Liverpool  shipping  clerk  to  be  the  banner-bearer  of  Britain. 

There  is  a  girl  in  one  of  Mr.  Henry  James's  novels,  a 
sweet  innocent  American  girl,  who  being  brought  in  con- 
tact with  a  complex  European  lady  wonders  whether  "the 

278 


MR.   MOREL  AND   THE   CONGO  279 

great  historic  word  '  wicked ' "  could  be  applied  to  her.  Most 
of  us,  too — though  we  know  how  weak  and  foolish  our  friends 
can  be — are  fortunate  enough  to  make  our  acquaintance 
with  "  wicked"  people  only  in  newspapers,  novels  and  melo- 
dramas. We  too  are  apt  to  think  that  wickedness  has  been 
largely  banished  from  civilization — it  is  an  ignorance  we 
acquire  at  school  where  we  are  taught  that  barbarians 
roamed  where  now  are  only  civilized  Christians.  And  so 
we  cry  like  that  cheery  character  in  The  Cloister  and  the 
Hearth:  "  Courage,  the  devil  is  dead." 

Liberal  Christianity,  I  presume,  does  not  believe  in  the 
devil — in  the  personal  devil,  that  is.  But  in  the  impersonal 
devil,  who  can  help  believing?  For  if  we  see  no  concrete 
evil  spirit,  we  do  see  everywhere  a  spirit  of  evil  that  may  still 
justify  us  in  speaking  of  the  devil.  In  the  old  monastic 
legends  the  devil  was  represented  as  always  taking  different 
shapes  the  better  to  do  his  evil  work.  But  I  do  not  think 
the  devil  ever  disguised  himself  more  effectually  than  when 
he  made  people  believe  he  was  dead  and  gone,  and  that 
Christianity  reigned  in  Christendom  without  a  rival.  It 
is  through  this  clever  dodge  of  his — this  policy  of  lying  low 
and  "sayin'  nufiin" — that  he  has  been  able  to  execute  in 
the  Congo  a  work  of  evil  of  unparalleled  magnitude,  to 
drench  with  blood  and  tears  a  country  half  as  large  as 
Europe.  For  who  could  believe  that  in  our  own  century 
a  Christian  King  could  have  sold  his  soul  to  him  for  gold? 
Who  could  believe  that  the  genial  long-bearded  Leopold 
was  a  monstrous  Moloch  to  whom  thousands  of  little 
African  children  were  sacrificed,  a  Juggernaut,  with  a 
rubber-tyred  car,  whose  wheels  revolved  remorselessly  in 
the  gore  of  the  myriads  it  crushed?  These  things  do  not 
happen  nowadays,  we  thought,  they  belong  to  the  days  of 
Nero  or  Herod.  And  even  when — largely  through  the 
labors  of  Mr.  Morel — it  was  brought  home  to  us  that  this 


280  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

Christian  King  out-heroded  Herod,  we  felt  that  his  death 
would  mean  the  wind-up  of  this  Satanic  era.  The  Congo 
would  pass  over  to  Belgium  and  a  Christian  Parliament 
would  hasten  to  atone  for  the  past  and  to  send  its  rays  of 
love  and  light  over  darkest  Africa.  How  the  devil  chuckled 
in  his  sleeve  amid  all  his  sorrow  at  the  death  of  his  royal 
henchman!  For  he  knew  that  Parliaments  and  peoples 
are  as  temptable  by  gold  as  Kings  and  individuals,  that 
Belgium,  whose  financiers,  statesmen  and  soldiers,  had 
already  been  tainted  by  complicity,  would  not  lightly  aban- 
don its  unholy  gains,  still  less  spend  a  million  a  year  for 
twenty  years  to  bring  about  that  moral  regeneration  of  the 
natives  which  it  professed  was  its  dearest  object.  But 
nevertheless  a  Parliament  cannot  act  as  brazenly  as  an 
autocratic  monarch,  and  is  moreover  always  sure  to  con- 
tain some  champions  of  righteousness,  if  only  by  way  of 
opposition.  And  so  the  devil  has  been  so  far  defeated  that 
he  has  been  expelled  from  portions  of  the  Congo  and  given 
notice  of  ejection  from  others,  and  though  an  area  has  still 
been  indefinitely  reserved  as  the  devil's  play-ground,  we 
are  entitled  to  congratulate  ourselves — and  still  more  Mr. 
Morel  and  the  Congo  Reform  Association — on  a  gigantic 
amelioration.  Rubber  is  no  longer  collected  by  the  lash 
and  the  knife  and  the  gun,  little  children  no  longer  hold  up 
their  bleeding  stumps  in  mute  protest  against  Europe. 
The  only  bleeding  now  known  to  us  is  that  of  the  rubber 
trees,  killed  and  drained  of  their  precious  sap  in  hot  haste 
by  the  companies  which  have  to  clear  out,  and  which  in 
their  ruthless  greed  would  leave  nothing  behind  them  but  a 
desert. 

Wickedness,  you  see,  is  no  "  great  historic  word,"  if  his- 
toric means  antiquated.  Wickedness  is  modern,  up-to- 
date.  Wickedness  is  as  fresh  as  this  morning's  paper — nay, 
it  often  is  this  morning's  paper,  crammed  with  lies  and 


MR.   MOREL  AND   THE   CONGO  281 

sensation.  For  another  of  the  devil's  cunning  contrivances 
is  to  make  people  believe  that  what  they  read  is  true. 
The  first  book  printed  was  the  Bible,  consequently  people 
have  ever  since  associated  print  with  truth.  That  was  a 
very  ingenious  revenge  of  the  devil  on  the  Bible.  One  of 
the  most  frequent  shapes  the  devil  takes  nowadays  is  that 
of  newspaper  proprietor.  He  runs  papers  in  all  countries 
— he  and  his  little  printer's  devils — and  it  is  these  papers 
of  his  which  have  so  long  contributed  to  keep  back  the 
truth  of  this  Congo  business.  The  devil  is  particularly 
clever  in  clouding  over  ugly  truths  with  a  mist  of  fine 
words,  and  one  of  his  most  complicated  tricks  is  to  accuse 
his  enemies  of  being  his  friends.  Men  like  Mr.  Morel, 
whose  whole  life  has  shown  an  exalted  sacrifice  of  personal 
interests,  find  themselves  bespattered  with  doubts  and  sus- 
picions. "  What  is  he  making  out  of  it?  "  the  devil  whispers. 
I  know  no  finer  weapon  in  the  devil's  armory  than  this 
insinuation.  For  most  people  are  unable  to  understand 
that  a  man  will  act  not  only  not  for  his  own  personal 
interests  but  actually  against  them.  And  this  same  weapon 
has  been  turned  against  Mr.  Morel's  country.  What  is 
England  going  to  make  out  of  it?  Has  she  not  her  eye  on 
grabbing  land  and  selling  gin?  Against  these  guiles  and 
wiles  of  the  devil  there  is  only  one  defence — the  good  old 
defence  of  "tell  the  truth  and  shame  the  devil."  Mr. 
Morel  told  the  truth — and  fortunately  for  him  the  evidence 
was  too  glaring.  The  crime  of  the  Congo  needed  no  Sher- 
lock Holmes.  Charred  villages  and  rivers  of  blood  and 
heaps  of  severed  hands — these  need  no  ingenious  puttings 
of  two  and  two  together  to  make  five.  A  clodhopper  could 
trace  how  Leopold  stole  his  treasure  out  of  these  poor  dead 
hands,  how  these  bleeding  stumps  upheld  the  pomp  of 
his  royal  state,  and  the  magnificent  establishments  of  the 
company-promoters,  the  three  hundred  per  cent  conces- 


282  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

sionaires.  We  have  heard  of  the  skeleton  at  the  feast,  but 
what  of  the  skeleton  under  the  feast,  the  skeleton  upon 
whose  bones  rest  so  many  banqueting  tables!  If  I  had  a 
cinematograph  I  should  like  to  show  you  a  picture  of  barons, 
counts,  and  Grand  Marshals  of  Belgium  banqueting  amid 
all  the  outer  refinements  of  civilization — with  spotless 
napery  and  silver  plate  and  white- gloved  footmen — and 
below,  in  an  African  forest,  the  cannibal  chiefs  they  employed 
to  extort  their  profits,  feeding  on  the  bodies  of  their  victims. 
And  there  were  missionaries  from  Belgium  itself  scattered 
amid  these  forests — missionaries  who  saw  and  knew.  They 
were  there  to  spread  Christianity.  But  the  wonder  to  me 
is  that  when  they  saw  they  did  not  hurry  back  to  Belgium 
—where  their  teaching  was  so  much  more  needed.  But 
they  remained,  and  with  them  missionaries  from  other 
sects  and  countries,  who  appear  in  some  instances  to  have 
played  a  noble  part  in  publishing  the  truth  or  protecting 
the  natives.  But  the  irony  remains  that  their  mission  in 
the  Congo  was  less  to  spread  Christianity  than  to  protect 
the  natives  against  the  ravages  of  Christendom. 

And  this  irony  was  even  vaster  than  the  mere  missionary 
comedy — for  it  embraced  all  Belgium,  which  was  only 
in  the  Congo  in  a  mission  of  civilization,  nay,  all  Europe 
and  America  which  had  guaranteed  this  moral  and  indus- 
trial regeneration.  The  devil,  we  have  seen,  plays  many  a 
part,  but  his  climax  of  audacity,  his  crowning  theatrical 
creation,  is  the  role  of  philanthropist.  The  old  rhyme  says 
that  "when  the  devil  was  sick,  the  devil  a  saint  would  be." 
Not  so.  It  is  when  the  devil  is  most  strong  and  active, 
that  he  would  be  a  saint.  The  very  name  of  Congo  Free 
State  is  a  masterpiece  of  pious  masquerading.  The  Inter- 
national Association,  which  created  the  Congo  Free  State, 
actually  declared  that  it  was  founded  "to  promote  the 
civilization  and  commerce  of  Africa  and  for  other  humane 


MR.  MOREL  AND  THE  CONGO  283 

and  benevolent  motives."  With  the  blessings  of  the  British 
churches  and  the  prayers  of  Bismarck,  the  Congo  was 
launched  to  "take  up  the  white  man's  burden."  I  hope 
that  Mr.  Kipling  has  by  this  time  discovered  that  when 
he  wrote  that  noble  Christian  poem  he  was  acting  as  Poet 
Laureate  to  the  devil.  The  "fluttered  folk  and  wild" 
whose  burden  the  white  man  must  take  up,  Mr.  Kipling 
describes  as 

"Half-devil  and  half-child." 

It  is  true.  The  native  of  the  Congo  is  no  angel.  But  what 
is  to  be  thought  of  the  white  man  who  has  not  even  the 
excuse  of  childishness  for  his  devilry?  The  white  man  who 
has  demoralized  even  the  savage,  who  has  taught  cruelty 
even  to  the  barbarian?  The  white  man  who  created  a 
condition  to  which  even  slavery  is  enviable?  For  slaves 
are  at  least  fed  and  guarded  like  horses,  not  starved  and 
mutilated.  Australia  began  as  a  convict-prison  and  rose 
to  a  colony.  The  Congo  began  as  a  colony  and  sank  to  a 
convict-prison.  And  this  was  how  the  white  Belgian  took 
up  his  burden.  They  say  the  devil  is  not  so  black  as  he 
is  painted.  I  can  quite  believe  it.  I  can  even  believe  his 
predominant  hue  is  white. 

There  is  indeed  a  "  white  man's  burden,"  but  it  is  to  battle 
against  evil,  in  whatever  spot  and  under  whatever  com- 
plexion. For  white  men  are  rare.  There  are  not  many 
Conan  Doyles.  Still  rarer  are  the  Morels  who  devote  their 
entire  lives  to  the  destruction  of  some  piece  of  the  devil's 
work.  And  let  us  remember  that,  unlike  Conan  Doyle, 
Morel  had  no  name  to  conjure  with  when  he  began  his 
career  of  quixotry.  To-day  when  Lord  Cromer  and  the 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury  vie  with  each  other  in  the  praises 
of  Morel,  it  is  easy  to  forget  the  long  obscure  struggle  of 
an  unknown  youth  uncheered  and  unsupported  save  by 


284  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

his  conscience.  He  was  only  twenty-four  when  he  couched 
his  lance  and  charged — a  shipping-clerk  against  a  king 
and  all  his  minions  of  darkness.  Can  we  have  a  better 
proof  that  one  man  with  God  is  a  majority?  For  this  clerk 
has  moved  Parliaments  and  Foreign  Offices  and  Churches 
in  more  than  one  country,  ay,  in  more  than  one  conti- 
nent. He  has  even  achieved  the  miracle  of  bringing  the 
Established  and  Dissenting  Churches  together — upon  this 
question  at  least. 

There  are  books  laying  down  the  rules  for  clerks — books 
of  the  school  of  Samuel  Smiles — that  tell  how  clerks  may 
rise  to  success.  Respect  for  seniors,  deference  to  employers, 
strict  attention  to  business — and  the  like.  Model  yourself 
on  your  masters  and  you  will  rise  to  mastership.  Young 
Morel  did  not  follow  this  road  to  success.  On  the  contrary 
he  attended  to  things  that  were  not  his  business,  he  got 
wind  of  the  corpses  rotting  in  the  Congo,  of  what  lay  behind 
this  profitable  Liverpool  business  of  shipping  rubber  from 
the  Congo  to  Antwerp,  he  even  remonstrated  with  his 
employers.  And  his  success  puts  Samuel  Smiles  to  shame. 
True,  it  is  not  a  pecuniary  success.  There  Samuel  Smiles 
was  right.  But  Mr.  Morel  has  cleared  an  area  larger  than 
France  and  Germany  from  super-slavery;  he  has  restored 
some  of  the  rights  both  native  and  international  that  were 
guaranteed  by  the  Berlin  Congress.  This  is  a  success 
which  puts  him  on  a  par  with  a  great  soldier  or  a  great 
politician.  But  a  great  soldier  when  he  comes  home  is 
feted  by  the  nation,  ennobled  by  the  sovereign,  and  pre- 
sented by  Parliament  with  a  purse  of  gold.  And  a  great 
politician  receives  place  and  power  and  salary.  Mr.  Morel 
has  received  neither  gold  nor  a  title.  But  if  he  has  not 
made  money  he  has  made  history,  And  if  he  has  not 
achieved  a  Knighthood,  he  has  achieved  something  finer 
and  rarer — he  has  been  a  knight — a  knight  without  fear 


MR.   MOREL  AND   THE   CONGO  285 

or  reproach.  If  we  are  to  define  Mr.  Morel  as  a  politician, 
we  shall  call  him,  as  Sir  Harry  Johnston  has  so  justly  called 
him,  "a  great  Imperialist."  Just  as  politician  has  been 
degraded  to  mean  a  party  politician,  instead  of  a  man  who 
serves  the  public  good,  so  Imperialist  has  been  degraded 
to  mean  a  man  who  extends  the  area  of  the  Empire.  I 
should  like  it  to  mean  a  man  who  extends  the  honor  of  the 
Empire.  For  many  years  Mr.  Morel  with  the  Congo  Re- 
form Association  stood  alone  in  demanding  that  England's 
treaty-rights  should  not  be  trampled  upon  by  King  Leopold 
or  the  Belgians!  Can  you  believe  it?  Britannia,  who  we 
are  given  to  understand,  rules  the  waves,  left  it  to  a  mere 
private  citizen  to  vindicate  her  rights  and  her  honor?  Even 
now  Britannia  only  opposes  a  passive  resistance  to  Belgian 
arrogance.  She  refuses  to  recognize  the  annexation  of 
the  Congo  till  Mr.  Morel's  reforms  are  carried  out,  but 
she  should  have  refused  to  permit  the  annexation  without 
obtaining  guarantees  for  these  reforms.  And  even  her 
minimum  of  resistance  to  Belgium  would,  I  grieve  to  say, 
have  been  withheld,  had  Belgium  not  been  a  minor  power. 
I  know  no  epoch  in  English  history  when  England's  sense 
of  dignity  and  self-respect  stood  so  near  zero.  The  more 
Dreadnoughts  we  build,  the  more  panic-stricken  we  become. 
Consols  are  low  to-day  but  not  so  low  as  the  British  Lion's 
tail.  If  there  is  the  slightest  stiffness  in  that  tail,  it  is  due 
not  to  the  Foreign  Office,  not  to  the  professional  politicians, 
not  to  the  noisy  so-called  Imperialists,  not  to  the  House 
of  Lords,  not  to  our  Howards  and  our  Percys,  but  to  the 
sleepless  insistence  of  an  ex-clerk.  Gentlemen,  Mr.  Morel 
has  obeyed  that  great  dictum  of  the  Talmud:  in  a  land 
where  there  is  no  man,  be  thou  a  man.  And  he  is  a  man  of 
bull  dog  tenacity — he  will  not  let  go.  No  acts  of  the  Bel- 
gian parliament,  no  soft  soap  of  politicians  and  financiers, 
no  bright  bubbles  of  promises,  will  make  him  relax  his 


286  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

grip  of  the  question  till  the  entire  area  of  the  Congo  is 
restored  to  its  native  owners,  with  freedom  of  trade  for 
themselves  and  the  world.  And  this  shall  and  must  come 
to  pass.  The  Congo  Slave  State  shall  be  truly  the  Congo 
Free  State.  And  then,  just  as  when  Dante  paced  the 
streets  of  Ravenna,  the  people  would  say:  "There  goes 
the  man  who  has  been  in  hell,"  so  we  shall  say,  as  we  see 
Morel  go  by,  "There  goes  the  man  who  has  defeated  the 
devil/' 


THE  AWKWARD  AGE  OF  THE  WOMEN'S 
MOVEMENT 

(Fortnightly  Review,  NOVEMBER,  1912) 

"And  what  did  she  get  by  it?"  said  my  Uncle  Toby. 
"What  does  any  woman  get  by  it?"  said  my  father. 
"Martyrdom"  replied  the  young  Benedictine. 

—TRISTRAM  SHANDY. 

The  present  situation  of  Women's  Suffrage  in  England 
recalls  the  old  puzzle:  What  happens  when  an  irresistible 
force  meets  an  immovable  body?  The  irresistible  force 
is  the  religious  passion  of  myriads  of  women,  the  fury  of 
self-sacrifice,  the  righteous  zeal  that  shrinks  not  even  from 
crime;  the  immovable  body  may  be  summed  up  as  Mr. 
Asquith.  Almost  as  gross  an  incarnation  of  Tory  prejudice 
as  Squire  Western,  who  laid  it  down  that  women  should 
come  in  with  the  first  dish  and  go  out  with  the  first  glass, 
Mr.  Asquith  is  all  that  stands  between  the  sex  and  the 
suffrage. 

The  answer  to  the  old  puzzle,  I  suppose,  would  be  that 
though  the  immovable  body  does  not  move,  yet  the  impact 
of  the  irresistible  force  generates  heat,  which,  as  we  know 
from  Tyndall,  is  a  mode  of  motion.  At  any  rate,  heat  is 
the  only  mode  in  which  the  progress  of  Women's  Suffrage 
can  be  registered  to-day.  The  movement  has  come  to  what 
Mr.  Henry  James  might  call  "the  awkward  age":  an  age 
which  has  passed  beyond  argument  without  arriving  at 
achievement;  an  age  for  which  words  are  too  small  and 
blows  too  big.  And  because  impatience  has  been  the  salva- 

287 


288  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

tion  of  the  movement,  and  because  the  suffragette  will  not 
believe  that  the  fiery  charger  which  has  carried  her  so  far 
cannot  really  climb  the  last  ridge  of  the  mountain,  but 
must  be  replaced  by  a  mule — that  miserable  compromise 
between  a  steed  and  an  anti-suffragist — the  awkward  age 
is  also  the  dangerous  age. 

When  the  Cabinet  of  Clement's  Inn,  perceiving  that  if  a 
Women's  Suffrage  Bill  did  not  pass  this  session,  the  last 
chance — under  the  Parliament  Act — was  gone  for  this 
Parliament,  resolved  to  rouse  public  opinion  by  breaking 
tradesmen's  windows,  it  overlooked  that  the  English  are  a 
nation  of  shopkeepers,  and  that  the  public  opinion  thus 
roused  would  be  for  the  first  time  almost  unreservedly 
on  the  side  of  the  Government.  And  when  the  Cabinet 
of  Downing  Street,  moved  to  responsive  recklessness, 
raided  the  quarters  of  the  Women's  Social  and  Political 
Union  and  indicted  the  leaders  for  criminal  conspiracy, 
it  equally  overlooked  an  essential  factor  of  the  situation. 
The  Cabinet  of  the  conspiracy  was  at  least  as  much  a  re- 
straint to  suffragettes  as  an  incentive.  It  held  in  order 
the  more  violent  members,  the  souls  naturally  daring  or 
maddened  by  forcible  feeding.  By  its  imposition  of  minor 
forms  of  lawlessness,  it  checked  the  suggestion  of  major 
forms.  Crime  was  controlled  by  a  curriculum  and  temper 
steadied  by  a  time-table.  The  interruptions  at  meetings 
were  distributed  among  the  supposed  neuropaths  like 
parts  at  a  play,  and  woe  to  the  maenad  who  missed  her 
cue.  With  the  police,  too,  the  suffragettes  lived  for  the 
most  part  on  terms  of  cordial  co-operation,  each  side  recog- 
nizing that  the  other  must  do  its  duty.  When  the  suf- 
fragettes planned  a  raid  upon  Downing  Street  or  the  House 
of  Commons,  they  gave  notice  of  time  and  place,  and  were 
provided  with  a  sufficient  force  of  police  to  prevent  it. 
Were  the  day  inconvenient  for  the  police,  owing  to  the 


AWKWARD  AGE   OF   THE   WOMEN'S  MOVEMENT         289 

pressure  of  social  engagements,  another  day  was  fixed, 
politics  permitting.  The  entente  cordiale  extended  even 
in  some  instances  to  the  jailors  and  the  bench,  and,  as  in 
those  early  days  of  the  Quaker  persecution  of  which  Milton's 
friend,  Ellwood,  has  left  record,  prisoners  sometimes  left 
their  cells  for  a  night  to  attend  to  imperative  affairs,  or 
good-naturedly  shortened  or  cancelled  their  sentences 
at  the  pressing  solicitation  of  perturbed  magistrates.  Prison 
was  purified  by  all  these  gentle  presences,  and  women 
criminals  profited  by  the  removal  of  the  abuses  challenged 
by  them.  Hollo  way  became  a  home  from  home,  in  which 
beaming  wardresses  welcomed  old  offenders,  and  to  which 
husbands  conducted  erring  wives  in  taxi-cabs,  much  as 
Ellwood  and  his  brethren  marched  of  themselves  from 
Newgate  to  Bridewell,  explaining  to  the  astonished  citizens 
of  London  that  their  word  was  their  keeper.  A  suffragette's 
word  stood  higher  than  consols,  and  the  war-game  was 
played  cards  on  table.  True,  there  were  brutal  interludes 
when  Home  Secretaries  lost  their  heads,  or  hysterical 
magistrates  their  sense  of  justice,  or  when  the  chivalrous 
constabulary  of  Westminster  was  replaced  by  Whitechapel 
police,  dense  to  the  courtesies  of  the  situation;  but  even 
these  tragedies  were  transfused  by  its  humors,  by  the  sub- 
tle duel  of  woman's  wit  and  man's  lumbering  legalism. 
The  hunger-strike  itself,  with  all  its  grim  horrors  and  hero- 
isms, was  like  the  plot  of  a  Gilbertian  opera.  It  placed 
the  Government  on  the  horns  of  an  Irish  bull.  Either  the 
law  must  kill  or  torture  prisoners  condemned  for  mild 
offences,  or  it  must  permit  them  to  dictate  their  own  terms 
of  durance.  The  criminal  code,  whose  dignity  generations  of 
male  rebels  had  failed  to  impair,  the  whole  array  of  warders, 
lawyers,  judges,  juries,  and  policemen,  which  all  the  scorn 
of  a  Tolstoy  could  not  shrivel,  shrank  into  a  laughing-stock. 
And  the  comedy  of  the  situation  was  complicated  and 


2  go  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

enhanced  by  the  fact  that  the  Home  Office,  so  far  from 
being  an  Inquisition,  was  more  or  less  tenanted  by  sym- 
pathizers with  Female  Suffrage,  and  that  a  Home  Secretary 
who  secretly  admired  the  quixotry  of  the  hunger-strikers 
was  forced  to  feed  them  forcibly.  He  must  either  be  de- 
nounced by  the  suffragettes  as  a  Torquemada  or  by  the 
public  as  an  incapable.  Bayard  himself  could  not  have 
coped  with  the  position.  There  was  no  place  like  the  Home 
Office,  and  its  administrators,  like  the  Governors  of  the 
Gold  Coast,  had  to  be  relieved  at  frequent  intervals.  As 
for  the  police,  their  one  aim  in  life  became  to  avoid  arresting 
suffragettes. 

Such  was  the  situation  which  the  Governmental  coup 
transformed  to  tragedy  unrelieved,  giving  us  in  the  place 
of  ordered  lawlessness  and  responsible  leadership  a  guerilla 
warfare  against  society  by  irresponsible  individuals,  more 
or  less  unbalanced.  That  the  heroic  incendiary  Mrs.  Leigh, 
who  deserved  penal  servitude  and  a  statue,  had  been  driven 
wild  by  forcible  feeding  was  a  fact  that  had  given  considera- 
ble uneasiness  to  headquarters,  but  she  had  been  kept  in 
comparative  discipline.  Now  that  discipline  has  been  de- 
stroyed, it  is  possible  that  other  free  lances  will  catch  the 
contagion  of  crime ;  nay,  there  are  signs  that  the  leaders  them- 
selves are  being  infected  through  the  difficulty  of  disavow- 
ing their  martyrs.  The  wisest  course  for  the  Government 
would  be  to  pardon  Mrs.  Pankhurst  of  Paris  and  officially 
invite  her  to  resume  control  of  her  followers  before  they 
have  quite  controlled  her. 

But  even  without  such  a  crowning  confession  of  the 
failure  of  its  coup,  the  humiliation  of  the  Government  has 
been  sufficiently  complete.  Forced  to  put  Mrs.  Pankhurst 
and  the  Pethick  Lawrences  into  the  luxurious  category  of 
political  prisoners,  next  to  release  them  altogether,  and 
finally  to  liberate  their  humblest  followers,  their  hunger- 


AWKWARD  AGE   OF   THE   WOMEN'S   MOVEMENT        2QI 

strike  on  behalf  of  whose  equal  treatment  set  a  new  standard 
of  military  chivalry,  the  Government  succeeded  only  in 
investing  the  vanished  Christabel  with  a  new  glamor. 
The  Women's  Social  and  Political  Union  has  again  baffled 
the  Government,  and  come  triumphantly  even  through 
the  window-breaking  episode.  For  if  that  episode  was 
followed  by  the  rejection  of  the  second  reading  of  the 
Women's  Suffrage  Bill,  second  readings,  like  the  oaths 
of  the  profane,  had  come  to  be  absolutely  without  signifi- 
cance, and  the  blocking  of  the  Bill  beyond  this  stage  had 
been  assured  long  before  by  the  tactics  of  Mr.  Redmond, 
whose  passion  for  justice,  like  Mr.  Asquith's  passion  for 
popular  government,  is  so  curiously  monosexual.  The 
only  discount  from  the  Union's  winnings  is  that  it  gave 
mendacious  M.  P.'s,  anxious  to  back  out  of  Women's 
Suffrage,  a  soft  bed  to  lie  on. 

One  should  perhaps  also  add  to  the  debit  side  of  the 
account  a  considerable  loss  of  popularity  on  the  part  of 
the  suffragettes,  a  loss  which  would  become  complete  were 
window-breaking  to  pass  into  graver  crimes,  and  which 
would  entirely  paralyze  the  effect  of  their  tactics. 

For  the  tactics  of  the  prison  and  the  hunger-strike  depend 
for  their  value  upon  the  innocency  of  the  prisoners.  Their 
offence  must  be  merely  nominal  or  technical.  The  suffra- 
gettes had  rediscovered  the  Quaker  truth  that  the  spirit 
is  stronger  than  all  the  forces  of  Government,  and  that 
things  may  really  come  by  fasting  and  prayer.  Even  the 
window-breaking,  though  a  perilous  approach  to  the  meth- 
ods of  the  Pagan  male,  was  only  a  -damage  to  insensitive 
material,  for  which  the  window-breakers  were  prepared  to 
pay  in  conscious  suffering.  But  once  the  injury  was  done 
to  flesh  and  blood,  the  injurer  when  punished  would  only 
be  paying  tooth  for  tooth;  and  all  the  sympathy  would  go, 
not  to  the  assailant,  but  to  the  victim.  Mrs.  Pankhurst 


2Q2  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

says  the  Government  must  either  give  votes  to  women  or 
"prepare  to  send  large  numbers  of  women  to  penal  servi- 
tude." That  would  be  indeed  awkward  for  the  Govern- 
ment if  penal  servitude  were  easily  procurable.  Unfortu- 
nately, the  women  must  first  qualify  for  it,  and  their  crimes 
would  disembarrass  the  Government.  Mrs.  Leigh  could 
have  been  safely  left  to  starve  had  her  attempted  action  of 
that  threat  really  come  off,  especially  with  loss  of  life.  Thus 
violence  may  be  "militant,"  but  it  is  not  "tactics,"  and 
violence  against  society  at  large  is  peculiarly  tactless. 
George  Fox  would  hardly  occupy  so  exalted  a  niche  in 
history  if  he  had  used  his  hammer  to  make  not  shoes  but 
corpses. 

The  suffragettes  who  run  amok  have,  in  fact,  become 
the  victims  of  their  own  vocabulary.  Their  Union  was 
"militant,"  but  a  church  militant,  not  an  army  militant. 
The  Salvation  Army  might  as  well  suddenly  take  to  shoot- 
ing the  heathen.  It  was  only  by  mob  misunderstanding 
that  the  suffragettes  were  conceived  as  viragoes,  just  as 
it  was  only  by  mob  misunderstanding  that  the  members 
of  the  Society  of  Friends  were  conceived  as  desperadoes. 
If  it  cannot  be  said  that  their  proceedings  were  as  quintes- 
sentially  peaceful  as  some  of  those  absolutely  mute  Quaker 
meetings  which  the  police  of  Charles  II  humorously  enough 
broke  up  as  "riots,"  yet  they  had  a  thousand  propaganda 
meetings  (ignored  by  the  Press)  to  one  militant  action 
(recorded  and  magnified).  Even  in  battle  nothing  could 
be  more  decorous  or  constitutional  than  the  overwhelming 
majority  of  their  "pinpricks." 

I  remember  a  beautiful  young  lady,  faultlessly  dressed, 
who  in  soft,  musical  accents  interrupted  Mr.  Birrell  at  the 
Mansion  House.  Stewards  hurled  themselves  at  her,  po- 
licemen hastened  from  every  point  of  the  compass;  but 
unruffled  as  at  the  dinner-table,  without  turning  a  hair 


AWKWARD  AGE   OF   THE   WOMEN'S  MOVEMENT        293 

of  her  exquisite  chevelure,  she  continued  gently  explaining 
the  wishes  of  womankind  till  she  disappeared  in  a  whirl- 
wind of  hysteric  masculinity.  But  in  gradually  succumb- 
ing to  the  vulgar  misunderstanding,  playing  up  to  the 
caricature,  and  finally  assimilating  to  the  crude  and  ob- 
solescent methods  of  men,  the  suffragettes  have  been 
throwing  away  their  own  peculiar  glory,  their  characteristic 
contribution  to  history  and  politics.  Rosalind  in  search 
of  a  vote  has  supplied  humanity  with  a  new  type  who 
snatched  from  her  testifyings  a  grace  beyond  the  reach  of 
Arden.  But  Rosalind  with  a  revolver  would  be  merely  a 
reactionary.  Hawthorne's  Zenobia,  who,  for  all  her  eman- 
cipation, drowned  herself  in  a  fit  of  amorous  jealousy,  was 
no  greater  backslider  from  the  true  path  of  woman's  ad- 
vancement. It  is  some  relief  to  find  that  Mrs.  Pankhurst's 
latest  programme  disavows  attacks  upon  human  life,  limit- 
ing itself  to  destruction  of  property,  and  that  the  Pethick 
Lawrences  have  grown  still  saner. 

There  might,  indeed,  be — I  have  already  admitted — 
some  excuse  and  even  admiration  for  the  Terrorist,  did 
the  triumph  of  her  cause  appear  indefinitely  remote,  were 
even  that  triumph  to  be  brought  perceptibly  nearer  by 
forcibly  feeding  us  with  horrors.  But  the  contrary  is  the 
case:  even  the  epidemic  of  crime  foreshadowed  by  Mrs. 
Pankhurst  could  not  appreciably  delay  Women's  Suffrage. 
It  is  coming  as  fast  as  human  nature  and  the  nature  of  the 
Parliamentary  machine  will  allow.  To  try  to  terrorize  Mr. 
Asquith  into  bringing  in  a  Government  measure  is  to  credit 
him  with  a  wisdom  and  a  nobility  almost  divine.  No  man 
is  great  enough  to  put  himself  in  the  right  by  admitting  he 
was  wrong.  And  even  if  he  were  great  enough  to  admit 
it  under  argument,  he  would  have  to  be  god-like  to  admit 
it  under  menace.  Rather  than  admit  it,  Mr.  Asquith  has 
let  himself  be  driven  into  a  position  more  ludicrous  than 


294  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

perhaps  any  Prime  Minister  has  occupied.  For  though 
he  declares  Women's  Suffrage  to  be  "a  political  disaster 
of  the  gravest  kind,"  he  is  ready  to  push  it  through  if  the 
House  of  Commons  wishes,  relying  for  its  rejection  upon  the 
House  of  Lords  which  he  has  denounced  and  enfeebled. 
He  is  even  not  unwilling  it  shall  pass  if  only  the  dis- 
aster to  the  country  is  maximized  by  Adult  Suffrage.  It 
is  not  that  he  loves  woman  more,  but  the  Tory  party 
less. 

But  although  Mr.  Asquith  cannot  be  expected  to  take 
the  one  short  step  between  the  ridiculous  and  the  sublime 
and  bring  in  a  Women's  Reform  Bill,  yet  it  is  not  unlikely 
he  will  do  what  the  suffragettes  demand  by  dropping  his 
Men's  Reform  Bill,  if  only  on  the  ground  of  time.  It  is 
difficult  to  see  how  that  and  Home  Rule  and  Welsh  Dis- 
establishment can  be  squeezed  into  one  session.  If  the 
Reform  Bill  is  dropped,  the  ground  will  be  open  again  for 
some  sort  of  Conciliation  Bill,  since  the  demand  for  Adult 
Female  Suffrage  is  only  an  angry  appendix  to  the  male 
measure.  It  is  just  possible  that  Women's  Suffrage  may 
first  appear  in  these  islands  by  way  of  a  clause  in  the  Home 
Rule  Bill,  and  this  Irish  entrance  by  a  side-door  would  be 
peculiarly  English,  dodging  as  it  does  the  main  issue  of 
women's  claim  to  vote  in  Imperial  affairs.  But  already 
there  is  talk  of  withdrawing  this  amendment  in  return  for 
some  more  or  less  shadowy  promises  from  Mr.  Redmond; 
it  is  in  any  case  obnoxious  to  the  Irish,  and  the  only  real 
way  for  this  Parliament  would  seem  to  lie  through  a  Con- 
ciliation Bill  like  that  originally  proposed  by  Mr.  Brailsford 
and  "  torpedoed  "  at  the  eleventh  hour  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George. 
There  is  no  reason,  however,  to  suppose  that  Mr.  Lloyd 
George  would  be  less  hostile  to  such  a  measure  than  before, 
especially  as  the  only  measure  that  could  be  carried  after 
this  session  must  be  so  narrow  as  to  ensure  its  acceptance 


AWKWARD  AGE   OF  THE  WOMEN'S  MOVEMENT        295 

by  the  House  of  Lords.  The  Parliamentary  struggle  over 
Female  Suffrage  is  less  a  struggle  against  it  than  a  competi- 
tion for  its  spoils.  Each  party  is  striving  to  annex  the 
balance  of  the  inevitable  female  electorate.  But  as  no 
measure  can  possibly  be  devised  to  favor  both  parties,  or 
even  to  equalize  their  winnings,  the  prospects  of  a  Concilia- 
tion Bill  scarcely  survive  analysis.  Hence  Christabel  Pank- 
hurst,  that  shrewd  practical  politician  who  is  giving  up 
to  womankind  what  was  meant  for  party,  has  long  since 
waved  aside  all  Conciliation  Bills  and  clauses  and  demands 
a  Government  measure.  But  Mr.  Brailsford  and  his  faith- 
ful band  of  M.  P.'s,  together  with  Mrs.  Fawcett  and  her 
National  Union,  are — despite  the  known  destructive  de- 
signs of  the  Nationalists — patiently  pursuing  the  ever- 
lessening  hope  of  a  conciliatory  clause  in  an  ever-receding 
Reform  Bill.  At  the  same  time,  taking  a  lesson  from  the 
militant  camp,  Mrs.  Fawcett's  Union  has  started  a  fight- 
ing fund  to  "keep  the  Liberal  out"  at  certain  by- 
elections  where  a  Labor  member  can  be  put  up  to  split 
the  Liberal  vote.  The  profit  of  these  tactics  seems  less 
to  the  Women's  Movement  than  to  the  Tory  and  Labor 
parties,  neither  of  which  pledges  itself  to  anything  in 
return.1 

All  things  considered,  I  am  afraid  the  Suffrage  Movement 
will  have  to  make  up  its  mind  to  wait  for  the  next  Parlia- 
ment. There  is  more  hope  for  the  premature  collapse  of 
this  Parliament  than  for  its  passing  of  a  Suffrage  Bill  or 
clause.  And  at  the  general  election,  whenever  it  comes, 
Votes  for  Women  will  be  put  on  the  programme  of  both 
parties.  The  Conservatives  will  offer  a  mild  dose,  the  Lib- 

1  "Mr.  Zangwill  misconceives  the  nature  of  the  relation  between  the  Na- 
tional Union  and  the  Labor  Party,"  wrote  Mrs.  Fawcett  in  the  next  number 
of  the  Fortnightly.  "It  is  emphatically  not  of  the  nature  of  a  bargain." 
But  surely  this  is  exactly  what  is  here  said. 


296  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

erals  a  democratic.  Whichever  fails  at  the  polls,  the  princi- 
ple of  Women's  Suffrage  will  be  safe.1 

This  prognostic,  it  will  be  seen,  involves  the  removal  of 
the  immovable  Asquith.  But  he  must  either  consent  to 
follow  a  plebiscite  of  his  party  or  retire,  like  his  doorkeeper, 
from  Downing  Street,  under  the  intolerable  burden  of  the 
suffragette.  Much  as  his  party  honors  and  admires  him, 
it  cannot  continue  to  repudiate  the  essential  principles  of 
Liberalism,  nor  find  refuge  in  his  sophism  that  Liberal- 
ism removes  artificial  barriers,  but  cannot  remove  natural 
barriers.  What  natural  barrier  prevents  a  woman  from 
accepting  or  rejecting  a  man  who  proposes  to  represent 
her  in  Parliament?  No;  after  his  historic  innings  Mr. 
Asquith  will  sacrifice  himself  and  retire,  covered  with  laurels 
and  contradictions.2  Pending  which  event,  the  suffragettes, 
while  doing  their  best  to  precipitate  it  through  the  down- 
fall of  the  Government,  may  very  reasonably  continue 
their  policy  of  pinpricks  to  keep  politicians  from  going  to 
sleep,  but  serious  violence  would  be  worse  than  a  crime, 
it  would  be  a  blunder.  No  general  dares  throw  away  his 
men  when  nothing  is  to  be  gained,  and  our  analysis  shows 
that  the  interval  between  women  and  the  vote  can  only  be 
shortened  by  bringing  on  a  general  election. 

There  are,  indeed,  sceptics  who  fear  that  even  at  the 
next  general  election  both  parties  may  find  a  way  of  cir- 
cumventing Women's  Suffrage  by  secretly  agreeing  to  keep 
it  off  both  programmes;  but  the  country  itself  is  too  sick 
of  the  question  to  endure  this,  even  if  the  Women's  Lib- 

1  This  prophecy  still  holds  the  field,  though  the  present  Parliament  has 
been  unconscionably  long  a-dying.     The  Reform  Bill  was  withdrawn  as 
prophesied. 

2  It  now  looks  as  if  through  the  war  Mr.  Asquith  has  found  the  light, 
for  he  has  promised  Mrs.  Fawcett  that  the  question  shall  be  "  fully  and 
impartially  weighed  without  any  pre judgment  from  the  controversies  of  the 
past." 


297 

eral  Federation  and  the  corresponding  Conservative  body 
permitted  it.  That  the  parties  would  go  so  far  as  to  pair 
off  their  women  workers  against  each  other  is  unlikely. 
At  any  rate,  now,  when  other  forms  of  agitation  are  more 
or  less  futile,  is  the  moment  for  these  and  cognate  bodies 
to  take  up  the  running. 

But  even  if  these  women  workers  fail  in  backbone,  and 
allow  themselves,  as  so  often  before,  to  be  lulled  and  gulled 
by  their  male  politicians,  there  yet  remains  an  ardent 
body  to  push  forward  their  cause.  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward 
and  the  Anti-Suffragists  may  be  trusted  to  continue  tireless 
and  ever-inventive.  Mrs.  Ward's  league  to  promote  the 
return  of  women  as  town  and  county  councillors  is  her 
latest  device  to  prove  the  unfitness  of  women  for  public 
affairs,  and  since  the  Vegetarian  League  for  combating  the 
carnivorous  instincts  of  the  tigress  by  feeding  her  with  blood, 
there  has  been  no  quite  so  happy  adaptation  of  means  to 
end.  If  anything  could  add  to  the  educative  efficiency  of 
the  new  league,  it  is  Mrs.  Ward's  scrupulousness  in  limiting 
it  exclusively  to  Anti-Suffragists. 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS 

[From  the  English  Review,  NOVEMBER,  1913] 

"  When  lawless  mobs  insult  the  Court 
That  man  shall  be  my  boast, 
If  breaking  windows  be  the  sport, 
Who  bravely  breaks  the  most. — COWPER." 


The  Women's  Social  and  Political  Union,  the  most 
troublesome  institution  of  modern  times,  was  founded  in 
October,  1903.  It  has,  therefore,  just  completed  a  decade 
of  activity — of  activity  unparalleled  and  exuberant,  rich 
in  comedy  and  tragedy,  in  heroism  and  flamboyance — and 
it  rs  high  time  the  public  should  cease  gasping  and  come  to  a 
just  comprehension  of  what  is  passing  under  its  nose.  Part 
of  its  hebetude  is  due  to  the  Press,  which  leads  it  by  that 
nose,  and  which,  since  the  days  when  Milton  looked  to  it 
for  the  safeguarding  of  liberty  and  justice,  has  become  a 
medium  of  organized  misinformation,  so  unreliable  that 
one  cannot  even  wholly  disbelieve  it.  Albert  Hall  mass- 
meetings,  with  every  seat  paid  for,  have  been  edited  away, 
while  with  equal  cynicism  trivial  incidents  have  been  spiced 
to  the  humor  of  the  mob.  King  Demos,  like  other  monarchs, 
hears  only  what  tickles  the  royal  ear.  In  their  wonderfully 
organized  campaigns  at  by-elections — at  which  they  have 
generally  hired  all  the  halls  and  commandeered  the  best 
street  pitches  before  the  other  side  has  quite  realized  there 
is  a  contest — the  Suffragettes  have  held  as  many  as  two 

298 


THE   MILITANT   SUFFRAGISTS  2  99 

hundred  public  meetings  in  a  single  week.  In  the  ordinary 
propaganda  of  the  Union,  the  number  of  platform  or  draw- 
ing-room meetings  has  reached  a  hundred  a  day  in  London 
alone.  Flower-festivals,  bazaars,  plays,  caravan-tours, 
processions,  bands — what  form  of  picturesque  persuasion 
has  it  left  untried,  where  have  its  cohorts  not  come  gleaming 
in  purple,  white  and  green?  Hyde  Park  has  known  them, 
and  Trafalgar  Square,  music-halls  and  village  greens,  the 
town  mansions  of  peeresses  and  the  drawing-rooms  of  the 
provincial  bourgeoisie;  they  have  even  scandalized  the 
faithless  by  praying  a  real  prayer  in  Westminster  Abbey. 
Yet,  when  a  journalist  wrote  that  their  treasurer  had  in- 
vested their  funds  in  bonds,  the  compositor  automatically 
put  it  "bombs." 

At  the  recent  Medical  Congress  in  London,  a  Scotch 
doctor  strove  to  class  their  militancy  with  the  dancing  or 
other  maniacal  epidemics  of  the  fourteenth  century:  he 
himself  was  suffering  from  contagious  misunderstanding. 
Said  an  elderly  schoolmistress  to  the  jury  that  was  trying 
her  this  spring  on  the  charge  of  window-breaking:  "I  think 
that  all  of  you  would  look  forward  with  dread  to  forcible 
feeding  as  carried  on  in  our  prisons.  Well,  I  declare  to  you 
that  the  idea  of  lifting  my  hand  in  cool  determination  to 
destroy  was  a  more  dreadful  idea  than  that  of  forcible 
feeding.  You  little  know  how  we  women  have  to  screw  up 
our  courage  to  acting  point."  Such  a  militancy  is,  indeed, 
too  rational  to  be  formidable.  It  is  of  the  brain,  not  of  the 
fist.  So  far  from  being  hysterical,  it  has  been  turned  on  and 
off  like  a  tap.  In  periods  of  false  promises  from  politicians, 
there  have  been  truces  more  faithfully  observed  than  any 
in  the  Balkans. 

But  at  first  it  was  not  even  a  cerebral  militancy.  It  was 
as  metaphorical  as  the  Salvation  Army.  In  the  over-' 
whelming  majority  of  instances,  the  operations  of  this  un- 


300  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

precedented  Union  have  been  devoid  of  all  violence  save 
that  inflicted  on  its  members  by  the  Government,  the  police, 
and  the  mob.  Even  when  it  strove  to  supplement  its 
constitutional  agitation  by  illegal  acts,  its  breaches  of  law 
were  long  merely  technical  or  symbolical,  designed  to  em- 
barrass the  Government  by  a  plethora  of  prisoners,  and  to 
achieve  the  advertisement  denied  to  a  peaceful  propaganda. 
When,  finally,  a  handful  of  desperate  spirits  proclaimed  a 
guerilla  war  against  society,  it  was  merely  against  dead 
matter,  and  it  is  amazing  that,  with  so  many  fanatics 
smarting  under  almost  intolerable  tortures  and  indignities, 
not  one  has  lost  her  balance  so  far  as  to  destroy  life.  The 
women's  war  remains  unstained  by  blood  other  than  their 
own.  They  have  been  stoned  and  beaten,  ducked  in  horse- 
ponds,  obscenely  maltreated,  imprisoned  in  the  third  class 
with  drunkards  and  pickpockets,  sentenced  to  penal  servi- 
tude, loathsomely  fed  by  tubes  and  pumps.  Captain  Scott, 
perishing  in  the  Antarctic  snows  for  lack  of  food,  was  less 
essentially  heroic  and  no  greater  a  pioneer  than  Miss 
Wallace-Dunlop,  the  fragile  inventress  of  the  hunger- 
strike,  starving  with  luxuries  heaped  beseechingly  around 
her.  It  is  impossible  not  to  think  of  the  temptation  in  the 
wilderness.  The  thirst-strike  and  the  sleep-strike  push  the 
doctrine  of  "Entbehren  sollst"  to  extremes  undreamed  of  by 
Goethe.  In  an  age  of  luxury  and  materialism  almost  un- 
exampled, amid  an  epidemic  of  negroid  dancing  that  might 
well  have  occupied  the  Scotch  doctor,  we  have  witnessed 
the  miracle  of  prison-doors  flying  open  by  force  of  faith 
and  self-sacrifice.  The  great  saying  of  Zwinglius:  "You 
can  kill  the  body,  but  not  the  soul,"  has  received  al- 
most incredible  illustration.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  the  Suffragettes  have  enlarged  our  conception  of 
human  nature  and  of  the  pitifulness  of  politics  and  poli- 
ticians. 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  301 

II 

"You  approve  of  votes  for  women!"  a  famous  American 
exclaimed  to  me.  "That  kind  of  vote?"  By  a  figure  of 
speech  yet  unclassed  in  treatises  on  rhetoric,  he  had  mixed 
up  the  end  with  the  means,  the  ballot-paper  with  the 
match-box.  Had  he  attended  a  Suffragette  meeting  at  the 
Albert  Hall,  he  would  have  found  the  "kind  of  vote"  quite 
other — some  ten  thousand  souls  of  all  social  classes  sitting 
prim  as  Elia's  Quakers,  spellbound  by  a  simple  little  wo- 
man in  black,  and  waking  only  to  pour  at  her  feet  their 
gold,  their  checks,  their  jewelry,  the  profits  of  hawking  the 
paper  in  the  wintry  streets,  the  little  hoard  saved  for  a 
summer  holiday,  even  the  week's  Old  Age  Pension.  The 
collection  at  the  last  assembly — after  the  Government  had 
left  the  Union  for  dead — was  fifteen  thousand  pounds,  sub- 
scribed in  a  few  minutes.  These  gatherings  have  been  the 
communions  of  a  new  religion  that  has  already  its  ritual,  its 
hymnology,  its  sacred  music,  its  symbolism  (the  broad- 
arrows  of  the  prison  garb  its  proudest  emblem),  its  pa- 
geantry, its  martyrology,  and  its  dogma  of  Pankhurst 
infallibility. 

"I  look  upon  myself  on  these  occasions,"  said  Mrs. 
Pankhurst,  "not  as  a  chairman,  but  as  a  general  reviewing 
his  troops."  From  a  burning  faith  to  a  faith  in  burning,  the 
transition — as  all  male  history  proves — is  facile.  But 
Mrs.  Pankhurst  did  not  begin  as  a  soldier.  Her  military 
status  has  been  a  gradual  growth,  unforeseen  by  herself. 
The  journals  of  1891  record  that  at  the  funeral  of  Charles 
Bradlaugh,  a  deputation  from  a  "Women's  Franchise 
League"  was  among  the  many  that  brought  wreaths,  and 
that  it  consisted  of  the  Countess  Schach,  Mrs.  Herbert 
Burroughs,  and  Mrs.  Pankhurst.  And  when  I  once  strove 
to  mitigate  her  growing  bellicosity  by  telling  her  how 


302  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

sympathetically  the  Lord  Chancellor  had  spoken  at  a 
dinner-party,  she  burst  out:  " Don't  talk  to  me  of  Haldane! 
Twenty  years  ago  he  was  our  League's  representative  in 
Parliament!"  Twenty  years  ago!  I  was  silenced.  A  long 
period  of  obscure  labor — the  spade-work  so  glibly  recom- 
mended, but  so  often  as  fruitless  as  the  sexton's — evidently 
lay  behind  this  explosive  phase:  the  genesis  and  collapse  of 
Leagues  and  efforts  untold.  The  great  little  lady,  who,  on 
her  husband's  death,  had  supported  herself  and  her  family 
as  a  Registrar  of  Births  and  Deaths,  had  had  many  a  birth 
and  death  of  scheme  and  dream  to  register  in  the  annals  of 
her  cause  before  there  came  into  being  at  her  house  in 
Manchester  that  W.  S.  P.  U.  which  will  surely  live  to 
record  its  victory.  Her  own  birthday  was  the  anniversary 
of  the  fall  of  the  Bastille.  That  has  not  counted  for  nothing 
in  so  imaginative  a  temperament. 

Ill 

Most  of  the  pioneers  of  the  W.  S.  P.  U.  were  Manchester 
working  women — one,  Annie  Kenney,  a  mill-hand,  who,  as 
a  half-timer  of  ten,  had  had  a  finger  torn  off  by  the  ma- 
chinery— and  the  new  gospel  was  preached  at  the  "wakes" 
or  local  Lancashire  fairs.  Militancy,  even  metaphorical, 
was  unthought  of.  The  first  sparks  of  that  were,  strangely 
enough,  struck  out  at  the  Free  Trade  Hall  by  the  flintiness 
of  one  of  the  oldest  supporters  of  Women's  Suffrage,  Sir 
Edward  Grey.  Prophesying,  in  October,  1905,  the  over- 
throw of  the  Conservatives  at  the  coming  General  Election, 
he  yet  refused  to  say  what  would  be  the  attitude  of  a 
Liberal  Government  to  "Votes  for  Women."  The  question 
had  even  (by  request)  been  put  into  peaceful  writing,  and 
signed  "Annie  Kenney,  Member  of  the  Oldham  Com- 
mittee of  the  Card  and  Blowing-Room  Operatives."  The 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  303 

humble  mill-hand  rose  as  the  monster  meeting  was  closing, 
and  insisted  on  a  reply.  Here  again  a  great  pioneering  deed 
was  done,  destined  to  find  imitations  and  reverberations 
innumerable.  Sir  Edward  Grey  was  silent,  but  it  was  Annie 
Kenney  who  stood  upon  a  peak  in  Darien. 

Those  who  know  the  temper  of  a  political  meeting  at  a 
passionate  crisis  will  appreciate  the  almost  superhuman 
courage  needed  for  a  girl  to  get  up  and  traverse  it.  The 
vast  gathering  of  Liberals,  hoarse  from  cheering  the  doc- 
trines of  liberty  and  equality,  howled  at  the  frail  little 
figure,  stewards  precipitated  themselves  upon  her.  It  was 
at  this  moment  that  Christabel  Pankhurst  leapt  into  history. 
She  sprang  up,  threw  one  arm  round  her  friend,  and  warded 
off  the  hysterical  males  with  the  other.  They  scratched  and 
tore  at  her  hands  till,  as  her  sister  Sylvia  records,  "the 
blood  ran  down  on  Annie's  hat,  which  lay  on  the  seat,  and 
stained  it  red." 

Expelled  from  the  meeting,  the  two  girls  tried  to  form 
one  of  their  own  outside.  Charged  with  "obstruction  and 
assaulting  the  police,"  and  refusing  to  pay  a  fine,  they 
were  thrown  into  jail,  dressed  in  serge,  and  fed  on  skilly. 
In  that  prison  the  real  W.  S.  P.  U.  was  born.  The  same 
Free  Trade  Hall  that  had  howled  down  the  questioners 
was  packed  to  fete  the  ex-prisoners.  Thus  is  persecution 
ever  the  pillar  of  the  Church. 

Annie  Kenney,  abandoning  her  clogs,  except  for  cere- 
monial occasions,  set  out  to  rouse  London — with  two 
pounds  in  her  pocket.  Little  Mrs.  Drummond,  the  wife 
of  an  impecunious  upholsterer,  a  cheery,  humorsome 
Scotch  body,  plump  of  person  and  prodigious  of  voice — 
the  Madame  Sans  Gene  of  the  movement,  destined  also 
to  become  its  field-marshal — joined  her  with  a  borrowed 
typewriter.  The  Pankhursts,  too,  migrated  to  the  capital. 
And,  one  wonderful  day,  they  found  the  propertied  Pethick 


304  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

Lawrences,  the  able  barrister  and  his  brilliant  and  beautiful 
wife,  self-consecrated  from  girlhood  to  social  service,  and 
oddly  bearing  the  same  Christian  name  as  Mrs.  Pankhurst. 
The  new  Emmeline  became  the  Honorary  Treasurer,  and 
from  that  moment  the  fledgling  Union  was  feathered  and 
winged  and  taloned. 

Among  the  more  noteworthy  of  the  early  recruits  were 
Theresa  Billington,  a  young  school-teacher  with  brains 
and  looks,  Mrs.  Despard,  the  septuagenarian  sister  of 
General  French,  not  inferior  to  him  in  dash  and  brio,  and 
Mrs.  Baines,  who  had  been  a  Salvation  Army  captain,  and 
was  now  the  wife  of  a  journeyman  bootmaker.  Gradually, 
figures  like  Mrs.  Ayrton,  the  scientist,  Miss  Ethel  Smyth, 
the  composer,  Miss  Beatrice  Harraden,  the  novelist,  began 
to  appear  on  the  same  platform  with  Lady  Constance 
Lytton,  the  Countess  Russell,  and  Mrs.  Walker,  the  elo- 
quent Poplar  laundress.  And,  gradually,  it  began  to 
be  understood  that  a  suffragette  was  not  necessarily  an 
elderly  spectacled  female;  the  type  even  changed  in  Punch 
to  a  pretty  girl.  But  the  notion  that  the  suffragette  is  a 
neurotic  spinster  is  inexpugnable.  It  has  even  survived 
the  discovery  that  some  of  the  fiercest  of  the  militants  are 
married  men — unique  exemplars  of  the  fabular  chivalry 
of  man. 

IV 

In  1870  Mrs.  Pankhurst's  husband  had  drafted  a  measure 
which,  under  the  name  of  the  Women's  Disabilities  Re- 
moval Bill,  was  introduced  into  Parliament  by  John  Bright's 
brother,  and  passed  its  second  reading  by  a  majority  of 
thirty-three.  It  is  a  pity  the  long-due  Reform  was  not 
carried  in  this  negative  shape,  for  the  cry  of  "  Votes  for 
Women"  accentuates  the  opposition  of  sex  rather  than  the 
common  citizenship,  and  whereas  the  motive  power  of  the 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  305 

suffrage  movement  had  been  woman's  consciousness  of  her 
own  dignity,  it  is  becoming  more  and  more  her  conscious- 
ness of  man's  indignity.  Man  has  failed  to  run  things 
decently.  There  must  be  "joint  housekeeping."  Woman 
must  help  man  to  set  his  house  in  order.  "I,  for  one," 
cried  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  "looking  round  on  the  sweated  and 
decrepit  members  of  my  sex,  say  that  men  have  had  control 
of  these  things  long  enough."  In  particular,  the  "social 
evil"  has  entered  into  the  suffragette  consciousness,  the 
veil  of  our  compromise  with  polygamy  has  been  lifted,  and 
the  sins  of  the  male,  assuredly  great  enough  to  be  safe 
from  exaggeration,  have  been  magnified  by  taking  the 
abnormal  for  the  average.  Woman's  place  in  our  matri- 
monial system  was  represented  much  as  the  West  repre- 
sents her  place  in  the  Oriental  scheme,  or  as  Mark  Twain's 
Yankee  described  the  Court  of  King  Arthur,  with  all  the 
facts  and  little  of  the  truth.  If  a  minute  minority  forthwith 
demanded  equal  immorality  with  man,  its  organ,  the  Free- 
woman,  was  not  destined  to  exemplify  the  survival  of  the 
unfittest,  and  by  the  vast  majority  the  vote  is  regarded  as 
the  great  instrument  of  social  purification.  It  is  even  to 
abolish  venereal  disease.  The  example  of  Suffrage  coun- 
tries is  cited  to  show  how  the  age  of  consent  has  everywhere 
been  raised,  drunkenness  abated,  and  child-life  saved. 
Thus  every  day  that  goes  by  without  the  vote  means  the 
degradation  of  souls  and  bodies  innumerable,  and  a  very 
massacre  of  innocents.  Hence  this  ardor  of  self-sacrifice, 
hence  the  religious  exaltation. 

Annie  Kenney's  deed  of  derring-do  came  like  a  trumpet- 
call  to  the  Millennium.  "Here  at  last  is  action!"  cried 
Mrs.  Pethick  Lawrence,  and  a  thousand  devotees  rushed 
into  it.  Heckling  became  a  fine  art,  and  even  a  joyous; 
for,  despite  all  the  suffering  it  cost  them,  they  carried  it 
through  with  such  inexhaustible  spirit  and  invention  as 


306  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

to  restore  a  touch  of  chic  and  bravado  to  our  drab  life  and 
add  to  the  gaiety  of  nations.  Miss  Pankhurst  even  man- 
aged to  badger  Cabinet  Ministers  in  the  witness-box.  Why 
interjection  was  invariably  answered  by  ejection,  why 
petitions  legitimate  to  men  were  punished  with  sentences 
deemed  sufficient  for  men's  worst  assaults  on  women,  is  a 
mystery.  But  if  denunciations  of  arson  leave  the  Suf- 
fragette cold,  it  is  because  the  vocabulary  of  vituperation 
had  been  exhausted  over  a  phase  which  now  looms  to  us 
as  sedate  as  an  Impressionist  picture  in  a  Futurist  exhibi- 
tion. Parliament  actually  passed  a  Bill  to  protect  public 
meetings  from  her — a  measure  which,  like  every  other 
hatched  against  her,  has  been  a  still-born  monstrosity. 
There  was  no  meeting,  however  guarded,  to  which,  by. 
hook  or  crook,  organ-pipe  or  drain-pipe,  she  did  not  gain 
admission,  padlocking  herself  against  easy  expulsion,  while, 
even  were  her  bodily  presence  averted,  always,  like  the 
horns  of  Elfland  faintly  blowing,  came  from  some  well- 
placed  megaphone  that  inevitable  and  implacable  slogan, 
which,  chalked  on  pavements  or  scrawled  on  walls  or 
blazoned  on  sky-signs,  became  a  universal  and  ubiquitous 
obsession.  Steamers  carried  it  under  the  terrace  of  Parlia- 
ment, or  balloons  suspended  it  from  above.  Cabinet 
Ministers  were  dogged  to  their  privatest  haunts,  for  the 
leakages  of  information  were  everywhere.  Since  Chris- 
tianity, no  such  force  had  arisen  to  divide  families.  No 
household,  however  Philistine,  was  safe  from  a  jail-bird. 
If  Lady  Anon  asked  Lady  Alamode  when  her  daughter 
was  coming  out,  it  no  longer  referred  to  the  young  lady's 
debut.  The  most  obstinate  autocrat  since  Pharaoh,  Mr. 
Asquith  has  been  shown  similar  signs  and  wonders.  "We 
are  the  appointed  plagues,"  said  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  with 
a  rare  touch  of  humor.  And  nothing  has  plagued  British 
Society  more  than  that  outbreak  of  religion  which  brought 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  307 

disgrace  upon  so  many  respectable  homes.  Incidentally, 
the  prisons  and  the  courts  were  improved  by  receiving  critics 
instead  of  criminals.  "  We  do  not  care  for  ourselves/'  cried 
Christabel  Pankhurst  at  the  London  Police  Court,  "because 
prison  is  nothing  to  us.  But  the  injustice  done  here  to 
thousands  of  helpless  creatures  is  too  terrible  to  contem- 
plate." Warders  and  wardresses,  too,  profited  by  the 
society  of  their  new  prisoners.  It  was  like  a  rise  in  the 
social  scale  to  them.  Nor  was  even  the  Bench  immune 
from  education. 

"Boyle!"  called  the  magistrate.  "Miss  Boyle,"  cor- 
rected the  prisoner.  "We  always  call  prisoners  by  their 
surnames,"  explained  the  magistrate.  "We  are  here  to 
teach  you  better  manners,"  said  the  Suffragette. 


Simultaneously  with  these  constitutional  tactics  there 
had  gone  a  political  militancy,  equally  constitutional. 
"The  Liberal  Government  refuses  the  vote — turn  the 
Liberal  out,"  was  the  simple  formula,  and  so  at  every 
by-election  the  W.  S.  P.  U.  worked  against  the  Government 
candidate.  He  might  be  an  old  and  tried  Suffragist.  The 
Conservative  candidate  might  be  an  old  and  scurrilous 
anti-Suffragist.  No  matter.  The  laws  of  the  Medes  and 
Pankhursts  do  not  change. 

It  was  Christabel,  LL.B.,  to  whom  this  policy  was  due. 
She  had  become  the  political  chief  of  the  movement,  and 
her  record  proves  that  woman,  not  man,  is  the  logical 
animal.  Unfortunately,  in  politics  we  have  to  do,  not  with 
the  logical,  but  the  psychological.  The  public,  exhorted  by 
her  to  vote  for  anti-Suffragists  and  to  overthrow  Suffragists, 
became  utterly  confused.  It  has  not  the  clarity  of  brain 
of  a  Bachelor  of  Laws.  The  demand  for  Women's  Suffrage 


308  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

was  already  sufficiently  obscure.  To  pursue  obscurum 
per  obscurius  could  only  occur  to  a  novice  in  affairs.  To 
make  the  public's  confusion  worse  confounded,  the  rival 
Suffragists  of  Mrs.  Fawcett's  National  Union  would  be 
imploring  it  to  support  the  candidate  denounced  by  the 
Suffragettes.  Either  policy  has  its  points.  Together  they 
were  suicidal.  Both  factions  would  have  done  better  to 
pair  and  leave  the  constituency. 

The  electorate  thus  bemused  stolidly  followed  its  own 
political  interests.  Indeed,  to  expect  it  to  give  them  all 
up  for  women  was  fantastic.  In  a  close  election  the  Suf- 
fragettes might  hope  to  turn  a  few  waverers,  but  even 
if  their  exhaustless  energies  triumphed,  their  part  was 
obscured,  not  always  wilfully,  in  the  confusion  of  electoral 
issues.  In  the  few  instances  where  the  issue  was  more  or 
less  isolated,  the  women's  candidate  was  hopelessly  defeated. 

Within  Parliament  as  little  impression  was  made  as 
at  the  polls.  Mrs.  Fawcett's  alliance  with  the  Labor  Party, 
dubious  enough  at  best,  was  neutralized  by  the  Pankhurst 
opposition  to  the  Labor  Party.  The  Women's  Liberal 
Federation,  the  sole  instrument  that  could  have  brought 
effective  pressure  on  the  Government,  was  divided.  Wom- 
an's disunion  is  man's  domination.  No  Minister  would 
stake  his  fortunes  on  Women's  Suffrage,  and  M.  P.'s  are 
peculiarly  sluggish  towards  changes  in  the  Franchise, 
which  force  them  to  face  a  new  and  uncertain  electorate. 
Such  as  favored  the  Reform  were  more  concerned  it  should 
benefit  their  party  than  womanhood,  so  that,  though  the 
abstract  principle  has  commanded  a  composite  majority 
since  1886,  no  possible  measure  could  be  framed  to  satisfy 
both  parties.  Is  it  surprising  if  the  Parliamentary  history 
of  Women's  Suffrage  reads  like  a  fantasia  by  Boz  on  the 
arts  of  circumlocution  and  "How  not  to  do  it"?  Seven 
times  it  has  passed  its  second  reading.  The  culminating 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  309 

comedy  when  Asquith  blundered  like  a  beginner,  and  the 
Speaker,  by  not  speaking,  misled  Parliament  and  the 
country,  goes  beyond  anything  in  Dickens. 

Despairing  of  the  force  of  argument,  the  Suffragettes 
turned  to  the  argument  of  force.  They  were  outside  the 
constitution.  Very  well,  they  would  be  outside  the  law. 
A  specious  logic  showed  that  Reform  Bills  had  only  been 
carried  in  1832,  in  1867,  and  in  1884,  and  that,  in  every 
case,  they  had  been  preceded  by  riots.  That  other  riots 
(e.  g.,  the  Chartist)  had  not  been  followed  by  Reform  Bills 
was  overlooked.  That  riots  are  to  the  riotous  sex  was  also 
forgotten.  Stones  thrown  by  logic-ridden  schoolmistresses 
are  not  the  true  volcanic  jet  that  sobers  statesmen.  To 
soften  still  further  the  force  of  the  stones,  they  were  thrown, 
not  at  Government  windows  in  particular,  but  at  the  plate 
glass  of  the  public  in  general.  The  injured  shopkeepers 
would  put  pressure  on  the  Government — they  would  rise 
as  one  woman  to  demand  Women's  Suffrage.  So  ran  the 
Pankhurst  syllogism.  But  that  is  not  the  psychology  of 
"the  nation  of  shopkeepers."  There  was  method  in  the 
madness,  but  the  public  saw  only  madness  in  the  method. 
Yet  the  Pankhurst  logic  did  not  flinch.  "How  far  shall 
you  go?"  Mrs.  Pankhurst  was  asked.  "Just  as  far  as 
we  are  driven,"  was  the  question-begging  reply.  And  so 
acids  were  poured  into  letter-boxes  or  upon  golf  greens, 
telegraph  lines  were  cut,  fire-engines  were  called  out  on 
false  alarms.  A  grave  psychological  change  took  place  in 
Mrs.  Pankhurst,  and  found  expression  in  a  public  ejacula- 
tion. "One  thing  we  thank  men  for — and  that  is  for  teach- 
ing us  the  joy  of  battle."  The  woman,  who  in  1906  had 
feared  that  women  could  not  be  got  to  walk  through  a 
few  streets,  did  not  fear  in  1912  to  invite  them  to  arson. 
It  is  "Black  Friday"  that  marks  the  turning-point  in 
Suffragette  psychology.  In  November,  1910,  a  deputation 


310  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

to  the  Premier  had  been  so  grievously  and  obscenely  han- 
dled by  the  crowd  and  by  the  imported  East  End  police — 
whose  conduct  the  House  of  Commons  steadily  refused  to 
investigate — that  it  was  resolved  henceforward  to  incon- 
venience oneself  as  little  and  society  as  seriously  as  possible. 

VI 

That  a  women's  political  movement  would  take  different 
shape  from  a  male  movement  might  have  been  anticipated. 
Force  would,  of  course,  be  banished,  the  policy  would  be 
as  shifting  as  the  weathercock,  while  seduction  and  cajolery 
would  reduce  male  diplomacy  to  a  coarse  bungling.  The 
exact  contrary  has  been  the  case.  The  simplest  diplomacy 
has  been  banished;  even  ordinary  politeness.  " You're 
a  liar,"  said  Mrs.  Dmmmond  to  Lloyd  George,  when 
admitted  to  a  friendly  interview.  Whereas  men  would 
have  made  the  most  of  Mr.  Asquith's  little  progressions 
and  persuaded  him  that  he  was  practically  arrived — if, 
indeed,  he  had  not  always  been  there — the  women  have 
pushed  him  violently  backwards.  Instead  of  saving  his 
face,  they  have  slapped  it.  Nor  did  it  profit  a  Minister  to 
be  on  their  side.  He  merely  added  hypocrisy  to  the  crime 
of  his  colleagues.  The  sole  method  of  the  campaign  has 
been  the  frontal  attack,  and  it  has  been  pursued  with  an 
unswervingness  that  has  more  of  natural  law  than  of  hu- 
man elasticity.  People  have  talked  of  militant  tactics. 
There  have  been  no  tactics.  There  has  been  only  mili- 
tancy. When  Mr.  Lloyd  George  addressed  an  audience 
of  Liberal  women  on  Women's  Suffrage,  an  invading  body 
of  Suffragettes  denied  him  a  hearing,  though  the  only 
raison  d'etre  of  interruptions  was  that  Ministers  were  evad- 
ing the  subject.  According  to  the  rules  of  war,  urged  Mrs. 
Pethick  Lawrence,  an  enemy  taking  cover  among  neutrals. 


THE  MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  311 

may  be  pursued  there.  But  "may"  is  not  "must."  That 
your  volley  may  damage  your  own  side  more  than  the 
enemy,  that  you  make  bad  blood  between  fellow-suffragists, 
that  you  confuse  the  country  and  rob  it  of  Mr.  Lloyd 
George's  powerful  speech  on  your  behalf — all  this  is  nothing. 
The  law  of  Minister-baiting  is  inviolable. 

The  traveller  up  the  Alpine  railway  knows  how  the  line 
zigzags  with  wrigglings  innumerable,  how  frequently  it 
goes  back  on  itself,  passing  and  repassing  the  same  point, 
though  always  on  a  higher  level;  how  it  even  disappears 
for  a  time  in  a  tunnel.  But  Christabel  Pankhurst  will  only 
go  straight  up  her  mountain — tunnelling  is  peculiarly 
anathema.  That  would  be  well  enough  if  she  could  com- 
mand the  funiculaire  of  military  force.  But  her  physical 
force  is  even  smaller  than  her  political.  Both  are  just 
sufficient  for  vivid  advertisement,  but  her  challenges  in 
both  to  the  Government  approach  megalomania.  "Seize 
the  mace,"  she  cried  in  a  Suffragette  rush  on  the  House, 
"and  you  will  be  the  Cromwells  of  the  twentieth  century." 
She  overlooked  Cromwell's  musketeers.  Even  Joan  of 
Arc  had  the  army  of  France  behind  her,  not  her  fellow- 
maidens.  At  the  head  of  a  party  in  the  House,  Miss  Pank- 
hurst would  have  rivalled  Parnell;  with  the  Labor  Party 
she  could  do  infinitely  more  than  Mr.  Ramsay  Macdonald. 
For  the  combinations  of  Parliamentary  atoms  she  has  a 
wonderful  flair.  But  what  is  the  use  of  divining  the  enemy's 
movements  when  all  you  can  do  is  to  commit  hari-kari 
on  his  doorstep?  Since  the  Children's  Crusade  of  1212, 
there  has  been  no  such  blend  of  the  ridiculous  and  the 
sublime  as  the  war  against  England  declared  by  logic- 
ridden  ladies.  Their  attempts  to  intimidate  the  nation 
have  the  pathetic  futility  of  Don  Quixote's  tiltings.  A 
nation,  especially  ours,  takes  a  good  deal  of  terroriz- 
ing. The  fire-insurance  societies  soon  accommodate  them- 


312  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

selves  to  the  new  risk.  It  is  only  because  there  has  been 
no  war  on  British  soil  for  over  a  century  that  Britons 
have  been  so  startled  by  burnings  and  harryings  ineffably 
trivial,  compared  with  real  war-horrors.  But  John  Bull 
has  not  called  for  Women's  Suffrage:  on  the  contrary,  the 
sleeping  dogs  of  hooliganism  have  been  aroused.  The 
dread  of  riots  undoubtedly  keyed  up  the  debates  in  the 
House  to  an  intensity  unknown  during  the  forty  years  of 
Parliamentary  flirtation  with  the  Woman  Question.  But 
the  House  did  not  surrender. 

The  real  damage  inflicted  by  Miss  Pankhurst  is  not 
physical.  In  Mrs.  Gaskell's  great  novel,  North  and  South, 
Margaret  Hale,  turning  upon  the  mill-owner  who  has 
dared  to  propose  to  her  because  she  rescued  him  from 
his  strikers,  cries  out:  "Any  woman  worthy  the  name  of 
woman  would  come  forward  to  shield  with  her  reverenced 
helplessness  a  man  in  danger  from  the  violence  of  num- 
bers." "Reverenced  helplessness!"  That  is  no  small 
asset  in  the  turmoil  of  life,  however  imperfect  the  ideal. 
The  destruction  of  this  asset,  as  well  as  of  the  asset  of  re- 
spect for  law  and  order,  for  statesmen  and  magistrates, 
is  a  grievous  wound  to  the  State: 

"  We  do  it  wrong,  being  so  majestical 
To  offer  it  the  show  of  violence." 

Says  Imlac  in  Rasselas,  "Man  cannot  so  far  know  the 
connection  of  causes  and  events  as  that  he  may  venture 
to  do  wrong  in  order  to  do  right.  When  we  pursue  our 
end  by  lawful  means,  we  may  always  console  our  mis- 
carriage by  the  hope  of  future  recompense.  When  we 
consult  only  our  own  policy  and  attempt  to  find  a  nearei 
way  to  good  by  overleaping  the  settled  boundaries  of  right 
and  wrong,  we  cannot  be  happy  even  by  success,  because 
we  cannot  escape  the  consciousness  of  our  fault;  but  il 


THE   MILITANT  SUFFRAGISTS  313 

we  miscarry,  the  disappointment  is  irretrievably  embit- 
tered." 

Militancy  may  not  have  put  back  the  clock  of  suffrage, 
but  it  has  put  back  the  clock  of  civilization. 

But,  if  anything  could  excuse  the  militants,  it  is  the 
taunt  of  a  Cabinet  Minister  that  he  saw  no  such  ebullition 
of  popular  feeling  as  had  burnt  down  Nottingham  Castle. 
Mr.  Hobhouse  was  perfectly  correct.  But  how  inconceiv- 
able of  a  Liberal  statesman  to  weigh  a  cause  by  its  vio- 
lence! "From  the  moment  Mr.  Hobhouse's  speech  was 
delivered,"  Mrs.  Pethick  Lawrence  told  the  jury  this  June, 
"women  began  to  feel  that  self-sacrifice  was  futile,  that 
nothing  could  touch  the  hearts  or  conscience  of  legislators 
but  .  .  .  damage  to  property." 


VII 

Miss  Christabel  Pankhurst  has  taken  her  motto  from 
Blake: 

"If  the  sun  and  moon  should  doubt, 
They'd  immediately  go  out." 

She  combines  the  spiritual  assurance  and  practical  genius 
of  a  St.  Catherine  of  Siena  with  the  determination  of  a 
hustler  and  the  logic  of  a  Bachelor  of  Laws.  There  is, 
perhaps,  something  of  Manchester  in  her  machine-like 
rigidity.  But  it  gives  her  the  invaluable  quality  of  decision. 
And  never  was  this  quality  exhibited  more  finely  than  in 
her  handling  (from  her  Paris  exile)  of  the  problem  of  bring- 
ing out  the  Su/ragette  when  printer  after  printer  was  warned 
off  by  the  Government.  Her  refusal  to  let  the  Labor  Party 
print  it  was  a  master-stroke. 

Inferior  to  her  mother  as  an  orator,  despite  her  vivacity 
(and  charm,  and  only  occasionally  touching  the  same  high 


314  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

note  of  religious  simplicity,  she  seems  to  have  carried  away 
the  graver  and  greater  figure  by  her  cocksureness.  It  is 
the  young  generation  kicking  at  the  door.  "When  should 
the  Government  give  us  the  vote?''  "To-day!"  That 
is  the  note  of  Christabel.  That  the  Government  would 
risk  an  internal  crisis  that  might  overthrow  the  still  unstable 
results  of  many  sessions,  that  the  Irish  and  Labor  Parties 
are  only  pursuing  the  same  single-eyed  system  as  herself, 
does  not  diminish  her  resentment  at  not  being  served  first. 
There  is  nothing  she  despises  so  much  as  the  M.  P.,  she 
has  told  us,  nor  is  Parliament  a  career  she  would  ever 
contemplate.  That  sounds  like  a  touch  of  masculine 
inconsequence,  the  one  breach  in  the  relentlessness  of  the 
female  logic. 

In  the  internal  conduct  of  the  W.  S.  P.  U.,  this  relentless- 
ness  has  been  as  marked  as  in  the  external.  With  the 
transition  to  militancy  went  also  a  transition  to  military 
law,  and  the  organization  ceased  to  elect  its  officers.  Autoc- 
racy was  found  the  best  means  of  promoting  democracy. 
Of  the  original  pioneers  of  the  movement,  only  the  working 
women  have  remained  with  the  Pankhursts.  Mrs.  Despard 
founded  the  Freedom  League,  Miss  Billington  has  become 
a  critic.  And  not  only  were  women  sacrificed  the  moment 
their  opinion  ran  counter  to  ChristabePs,  even  the  greatest 
friends  in  the  House  of  Commons  went  unheeded,  though 
it  might  have  been  thought  they  understood  the  machine 
better.  Nay,  even  the  two  Emmelines  were  parted  on  the 
policy  of  arson. 

The  Pethick  Lawrences  had  been  travelling  in  Canada, 
had  seen  fresh  horizons,  and,  removed  from  the  Pankhurst 
hypnosis,  had  readjusted  their  perspective.  The  split 
occurred  at  an  unfortunate  moment  for  Mrs.  Pankhurst, 
when  the  cause  was  already  overclouded,  and  the  return  of 
the  Pethick  Lawrences  was  the  one  patch  of  blue,  and  a 


THE  MILITANT   SUFFRAGISTS  315 

mighty  audience  waited  in  the  Albert  Hall  to  welcome 
them  home.  It  was  only  a  few  minutes  before  the  meeting 
that  sinister  rumors  began  to  circulate — the  color  seemed 
to  go  out  of  the  emblazoned  banners.  It  was  Mrs.  Pank- 
hurst's  formidable  task  to  explain  that  she  had  ruthlessly 
shed  the  beloved  Treasurer,  that  the  very  organ  of  the 
movement,  Votes  for  Women,  would  be  replaced  by  a  raw 
new  paper.  The  little  woman  stood  alone  on  the  platform, 
bereft  even  of  Christabel.  Never  had  she  shown  such 
greatness.  A  few  simple  sentences,  crystalline  in  sound 
as  in  form,  and  the  vast  audience  was  hers  again.  In  a  few 
weeks  the  Suffragette  had  cut  out  the  Pethick  Lawrence 
paper  as  the  official  organ.  But  never  a  word  of  recrimina- 
tion has  come  from  either  side.  Neither  party  has  spoken 
of  the  other  except  in  terms  of  regard.  It  is  an  episode  for 
which  you  will  find  no  parallel  in  male  factions. 

VIII 

Hari-kari,  the  one  resource  of  the  Suffragettes,  turns 
out  to  be  their  strongest  weapon.  Englishmen  are  not  so 
brutish  that  they  can  bear  the  sight  of  martyred  innocence. 
The  heroic  suicide  of  a  lady  of  wealth  and  station  on  the 
public  doorstep  of  the  Derby  is  worth  a  wilderness  of  fires, 
and  the  cross  that  was  borne  before  her  body  at  the  great 
funeral  was  a  more  victorious  symbol  than  the  hammer. 
Militancy  is  only  successful  in  so  far  as  it  brings  suffering 
to  the  militants.  If  this  were  a  real  war,  could  one  say 
the  greater  their  casualties  the  nearer  their  triumph?  In 
war  you  menace  the  enemy  with  death.  Mrs.  Pankhurst 
is  menacing  the  enemy  with  her  own  death.  Even  if  we  al- 
low the  Government  merely  the  wisdom  of  knowing  that 
the  blood  of  the  martyrs  is  the  seed  of  the  Church,  the 
fact  that  she  is  not  allowed  to  die,  even  though  Ministers 


316  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

are  at  their  wits'  ends  to  keep  her  and  the  law  alive  together, 
is  a  comforting  reassurance  of  human  progress.  Four 
years  ago  Mrs.  Pankhurst  said  in  the  dock:  "Our  words 
have  always  been — be  patient,  exercise  self-restraint,  show 
our  so-called  superiors  that  the  criticism  of  women  being 
hysterical  is  not  true,  use  no  violence,  offer  yourselves  to 
the  violence  of  others."  Militancy  was  born  out  of  despair 
of  constitutionalism:  out  of  despair  of  militancy,  Mrs. 
Pankhurst  has  come  back  to  the  teaching  of  "  Corinthians." 
Crime  is  now  merely  a  cover  for  her  hunger-strike.  Her 
utter  selflessness,  the  unbreakable  energy  of  that  frail  body 
under  the  Cat-and-Mouse  Bill  (aptly  compared  to  the  Iron 
Maiden  of  the  Middle  Ages,  whose  iron  spikes  slowly 
squeezed  out  the  life  of  the  victim, — the  noble  eloquence 
which  moved  the  prosecuting  Attorney- General,  Sir  Rufus 
Isaacs,  to  tears — these  are  beginning  to  tell  even  on  the 
clergy,  always  the  last  to  recognize  religion  in  its  con- 
temporary vesture.  Even  bishops  have  demanded  the 
death  of  the  Cat-and-Mouse  Bill,  that  bungle  of  benev- 
olence and  barbarism  devised  in  a  panic  to  save  the  forms 
of  Law,  and  carried  finally  through  the  House  of  Lords — 
whose  function,  according  to  Asquith,  is  to  " impose  delay" 
— in  sixty  seconds.  But  the  Bill  has  been  killed  without 
prayers  in  aid.  The  prisoners  have  torn  up  their  licenses 
or  sold  them  by  auction — Mrs.  Pankhurst's  fetched  a 
hundred  pounds.  Some  have  escaped,  some  have  refused 
to  quit  the  cell.  Mrs.  Pankhurst — a  convict  under  three 
years'  hard  labor — left  England,  like  her  fellow-politicians, 
when  the  House  rose:  to  recuperate  for  a  lecture  campaign 
in  America.  The  suppressed  Suffragette  has  a  larger  cir- 
culation than  ever.  The  officials  of  the  W.  S.  P.  U.,  so 
recently  condemned  to  long  terms  of  durance,  are  at  their 
desks  in  Kingsway,  calmly  pursuing  the  " criminal"  routine 
of  the  office.  "  There  is  no  coercive  measure  within  the 


THE   MILITANT   SUFFRAGISTS  317 

imagination  of  either  men  or  devils,"  writes  the  Sujfra- 
gette,  "that  the  women  of  this  Union  cannot  withstand, 
if  not  living,  then  dead."  Yes,  the  Government  lies  para- 
lyzed and  humiliated. 

It  is  magnificent,  but  it  is  not  the  vote. 

IX 

Podsnaps,  posing  as  open-minded,  prattle  that  women 
ought  to  have  the  vote — excepting  the  Suffragettes,  who 
have  clearly  shown  themselves  unfitted.  The  contrary  is 
the  more  rational  course.  Every  militant  has  earned  a 
hundred  votes.  The  weakness  of  the  argument  from  mar- 
tyrdom lies  precisely  in  its  irrelevance  to  the  other  women, 
the  stodgy  indifferentists  or  the  angry  Antis.  But  to  impose 
freedom  on  those  who  would  rather  be  slaves,  like  to  impose 
insurance  on  those  who  would  rather  be  feckless,  is  the 
task  of  Liberal  statesmanship.  To  repudiate  the  task, 
to  deny  freedom  even  to  those  who  demand  it,  is  the  nega- 
tion of  Liberalism.  That  some  Conservatives,  too,  favor 
Female  Suffrage  only  shows  how  overdue  it  is.  Even  the 
Anti-Suffrage  Society  of  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward  demands 
municipal  office  for  women.  The  vast  transformations 
already  effected  in  women's  social,  economic,  and  educa- 
tional status  call,  in  fact,  for  a  correlative  political  revolu- 
tion. To  imagine  it  is  "  Votes  for  Women"  that  menaces 
the  old  order  is  to  take  the  branch  for  the  root.  There  is 
no  anti-Suffragist  M.  P. — the  Prime  Minister  not  excluded 
— whose  wife  or  daughter  does  not  spout  from  political 
platforms.  Not  even  Christabel  Pankhurst  is  a  keener 
politician  than  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward. 

The  errors  of  political  novices  adventuring  in  unmapped 
territory,  but  offering  their  life  for  their  cause,  will  seem 
small  to  posterity  in  comparison  with  the  Liberal  Leaders' 


318  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

sin  against  Liberalism.  That  the  protagonist  of  the  people, 
the  historic  overthrower  of  the  Lords,  should  be  the  evil 
genius  of  the  woman's  movement,  is  a  tragic  paradox. 
Mr.  Asquith  is  a  statesman  of  grave  and  lofty  conceptions 
and  otherwise  unblemished  honesty,  but  his  latest  pose 
that  there  is  little  to  be  said  on  one  side  or  the  other  is  more 
amazing  than  his  ancient  antagonism.  That  was  self- 
stultifying,  but  dignified;  this  is  unpardonable  frivolity. 
A  recent  cartoon  in  the  Suffragette  represents  Justice  as 
saying  to  him:  "Why  not  give  them  the  vote,  and  release 
me  from  tasks  that  are  an  outrage  on  my  name?"  And 
Mr.  Asquith  replies:  "Now,  enough  of  that,  my  woman, 
I've  suspected  all  along  you  were  on  their  side."  If  he  did 
not  suspect  it  all  along,  he  suspects  it  now.  And  the  public 
at  large  suspects  it,  and  is  more  ready  to  receive  Women's 
Suffrage  than  many  a  project  which  politicians  palm  off 
upon  it.  That  Women's  Suffrage  will  pass  over  the  body 
of  Mr.  Asquith  is  one  of  the  few  certainties  of  the  near 
future. 


PROLOGUE  FOR  A  WOMEN'S  THEATRE 

[SPOKEN  BY  Miss  FAY  DAVIS  AT  THE  ACTRESSES'  FRAN- 
CHISE LEAGUE  MATINEE  ON  FRIDAY,  OCTOBER  27,  1911, 
LYCEUM  THEATER] 

"  Before  the  sunrise  there  must  come  the  gray, 
So  bear  with  me — the  prologue  to  the  play. 
Not  mere  diversion  is  our  true  intent. 
To  whisper  it — on  politics  we're  bent. 
While  preachers  rarely  to  performance  reach, 
We  at  one  blow  shall  both  perform  and  preach. 
You  dreamed  us  dummies  to  fit  dresses  on, 
To  prop  heroic  mask  of  Amazon, 
Princess  or  queen,  ourselves  but  tailors'  blocks, 
Or  if  with  thoughts,  then  merely  orthodox. 
Not  so;  behind  our  mask  we  keep  our  soul, 
Nor  take  our  mimic  world  for  the  great  whole. 
All  noble  causes  tax  our  pence  and  prayers. 
Are  all  the  men  and  women  merely  players, 
As  Shakespeare  said?    Then  players  in  their  turn 
Are  men  and  women  who  aspire  and  yearn. 
And  is  it  true  that  all  the  world's  a  stage? 
Then  we  would  act  on  that  and  on  the  age. 
And  so  we  covet  parts  in  that  great  play, 
For  which  the  whole  world  is  a  stage  to-day: 
That  drama  with  a  purpose  finely  human, 
To  raise  man  higher  by  uplifting  woman. 
We  too  demand  by  love  and  sacrifice 
To  pay  our  quota  of  the  grievous  price 
Blind  man  exacts  for  setting  woman  free: 
Labors  and  pains  no  less  than  gold  the  fee, 
The  scoff,  the  blow,  the  prison — worst  of  all, 
The  bitter  need  like  men  to  bawl  and  brawl. 
And  wherefore,  prithee,  all  this  monstrous  ransom? 
How  is  she  not  man's  equal,  save  more  handsome? 

319 


320  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

In  Shakespeare's  day,  if  Clio's  voice  be  truth's, 

His  heroines  were  played  by  beardless  youths. 

Just  fancy  Rosalind  a  real  male, 

Quaffing  between  the  acts  her  stoup  of  ale, 

Or  Perdita  concealing  manly  art, 

Or  Desdemona  shaving  for  the  part. 

Imagine  some  mere  man  for  Ellen  Terry — 

You  might  as  well  replace  champagne  by  sherry. 

We've  won  equality  upon  the  boards, 

But  on  the  world-stage  men  are  still  the  lords, 

Making  sad  mischief  with  their  stupid  swords. 

The  time  is  out  of  joint — let's  set  it  right 

Not  whine  and  wail  with  Hamlet  'cursed  spite/ 

That  cry  was  merely  masculine  hysteria, 

For  real  statesmanship  you  need  Egeria. 

But  Hamlet  was  so  hard  soliloquizing, 

He  had  no  ear  for  feminine  advising. 

Ah,  if  instead  of  suicide-suggestion, 

To  vote  or  not  to  vote  had  been  the  question, 

Ophelia  had  met  with  mocking  flout, 

Hamlet's  male  insolence  of  sneer  and  doubt. 

Nunnery  forsooth!    When  she  at  Hamlet's  fat  form 

Could  thunder  suffrage  from  the  castle-platform! 

'The  time  is  out  of  joint?'    Then  what's  the  cure? 

Joint  work  of  men  and  women  to  be  sure: 

Joint  work  to  foster  every  noble  growth, 

Joint  work  to  make  a  better  world  for  both. 

Refuse  us  this,  let  false  friends  trick  the  nation 

To  burke  the  Bill  that  brings  Conciliation. 

Then  have  at  you,  my  lords,  on  with  the  fray. 

How  long,  Oh  lords?    Till  woman  has  her  way." 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  WOMEN 

"  O  Woman,  in  our  hours  of  peace, 
At  war  with  Parliament  and  Police, 
When  Man  it  is  that  starts  the  row, 
The  best  munition-maker  now." 

I.  WOMAN  AS  WORKER 

It  cannot  be  a  mere  coincidence  that  the  war  was  made  in 
Germany,  the  Male  State  in  excelsis,  where  woman,  in  the 
Kaiser's  favorite  saying,  must  stick  to  her  three  K's — 
Kitchen,  Kids,  and  Kirk,  we  may  perhaps  render  it.1  Not 
for  her  the  glories  of  the  Turnverein,  the  beatitude  of  the 
beer-hall,  or  the  gospel  of  slashing  the  other  cheek;  not 
even  the  equality  of  the  University.  It  is  her  lord  alone 
that  makes  her  the  Mrs.  Doctor  or  the  Mrs.  Professor. 

That  to  this  status  of  the  German  woman,  Armageddon 
may  be  due,  is  no  fantastic  speculation.  For  it  is  only  by 
sheer  absence  of  humor  that  Germany's  brain  could  have 
tumefied  with  the  notion  of  a  Teutonic  mission  to  mankind — 
by  submarine  and  poison-gas — and  absence  of  humor  is 
directly  traced  by  Meredith  to  contempt  for  the  woman. 

"If  the  German  men,"  he  observed  in  his  Essay  on 
Comedy,  "would  consent  to  talk  on  equal  terms  with  their 
women,  and  to  listen  to  them,  Comedy,  or  in  any  form, 
the  Comic  spirit  will  come  to  them."  That  is  to  say, 
women's  corrective  criticism  would  have  brought  propor- 
tion, and  proportion  is  the  mother  of  humor.  But  they  have 

1  It  seems  an  ironic  nemesis  that  the  moral  of  Germany  should  now  be 
undermined  by  the  disaffection  of  all  these  Kitchen-women,  wailing  for 
butter! 

321 


322  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

not  listened  to  their  women,  and  so  (as  by  the  bad  fairy's 
gift  at  a  christening)  all  the  other  delightful  gifts  of  the 
race,  all  the  music,  science  and  philosophy,  are  spoiled.  In 
place  of  humor — the  dancing  smile  in  the  eyes  of  wisdom — 
the  Teuton  has  only  the  grin  of  the  gargoyle.  "His  irony," 
says  Meredith,  "is  a  missile  of  terrific  tonnage;  sarcasm 
he  emits  like  a  blast  from  the  dragon's  mouth.  He  must  and 
will  be  Titan." 

If,  then,  his  insolent  isolation  from  feminine  influence 
is  the  deepest  cause  of  his  swashbuckling  temper,  it  follows 
that  the  position  of  women  is  not  a  factor  of  history  to  be 
lightly  disregarded,  nor  one  that  fails  to  wreak  its  effects 
because  historians  and  politicians  neglect  to  take  it  into 
account. 

Electricians  divide  bodies  by  the  resistance  they  offer  to 
the  passage  of  the  electric  current  as  calculated  in  "ohms." 
Humanity  may  be  divided  into  classes  by  the  resistance 
they  offer  to  new  ideas.  The  Americans,  for  example, 
have  a  small  ohmage,  the  English  a  high.  Judged  by  the 
evolution  of  their  women,  old  countries  like  Sweden  and 
Finland  are  less  resistant  than  even  the  New  World.  In 
England  woman  has  not  moved  a  step  in  any  direction  with- 
out a  hue  and  cry.  Tragical  is  the  story  of  the  first  medical 
pioneers,  and  equality  with  the  man  physican  is  even  yet 
not  won,  though  every  new  female  doctor  is  now  hailed  as  a 
godsend  by  the  male  millions  engaged  night  and  day  in 
making  work  for  her.1  The  "lost  volts"  is  the  pathetic 
name  for  the  units  of  electric  pressure  wasted  through  re- 
sistance. What  a  ghastly  waste  of  human  force  this  British 
bulldoggedness  is  answerable  for! 

1  There  was  (according  to  the  Times)  a  very  large  increase  in  1915  of 
medical  and  dental  students.  An  enormous  amount  of  work  has  been  done 
under  Government  control  by  women  in  laboratories  in  the  making  of 
synthetic  drugs  and  anti-toxins.  They  have  also  made  airplanes  and  even 
worked  out  the  difficult  mathematical  problems  arising  out  of  specifications. 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN 


323 


But  sometimes  in  every  country  this  ohmage  of  obstinacy 
is  overwhelmed  by  sudden  forces.  Social  evolution,  which 
proceeds  usually  like  the  snail,  proceeds  at  these  moments 
like  the  kangaroo — "by  leaps  and  bounds" — just  as  geologi- 
cal changes,  which  in  normal  times  are  imperceptibly  slow, 
are  sometimes  cataclysmic.  Such  a  volcanic  upheaval 
has  the  war  brought  to  women.  In  this  transformation  of 
the  social  landscape,  the  suffrage  question  has  become  a 
relatively  insignificant  landmark. 

The  cause  of  woman's  sudden  rise  in  status  is  the  discovery 
that,  like  the  horse,  she  is  not  merely  a  domestic  beast  of 
burden,  but  may  also  be  useful  for  war.  In  a  passive  sense, 
the  discovery  was  not  new.  Did  not  Sir  Walter  Scott  an- 
nounce it  in  his  famous  apostrophe  to  "Woman  in  our 
hours  of  ease?"  Did  not  Victor  Hugo  glorify  the  French- 
women in  the  siege  of  Paris,  who  "gave  to  despairing 
combatants  the  encouragement  of  their  smile,  who  refused, 
even  before  hunger,  even  before  death,  the  surrender  of 
their  city?  "  But  Patience  smiling  at  grief,  though  it  may  be 
set  on  a  monument,  wins  little  real  regard  in  the  "man- 
made"  world.  Not  even  the  active  business  services  uni- 
versally rendered  in  France  by  Frenchwomen  could  rescue 
them  from  the  insignificance  attaching  to  a  sex  that  merely 
creates  and  does  not  destroy.  And  in  England,  though 
Florence  Nightingale  practically  saved  our  Crimean  Army, 
she  was  impotent  to  help  the  army  of  women  pushing  into 
the  arena  at  home.  Besides,  war  had  not  for  centuries 
really  come  home  to  the  British  breast.  In  the  great  Na- 
poleonic days,  when  Jane  Austen  was  writing  her  quiet 
country-house  comedies  with  never  a  word  of  the  events 
that  were  shaking  mankind,  war  was  for  England  a  foreign 
adventure,  restricted  mainly  to  two  social  classes,  the  cream 
of  the  cream  and  the  dregs  of  the  gutter. 

Your  military  acquaintance — your  gay  ensigns  and  crusty 


324  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

colonels — went  off  to  the  wars  much  as  an  expedition  now 
goes  off  to  the  Antarctic. 

If  you  were  a  Society  lady  or  a  Becky  Sharp  you  could 
follow  Wellington  to  Flanders  and  dance  in  the  great 
Brussels  ball  that  Waterloo  broke  up.  At  the  first  booming 
of  the  cannon  you  fled,  or  stayed  to  pray  for  the  fighters. 
It  was  all  very  interesting  and  picturesque,  but  except  on 
the  black  days,  eloquently  described  in  Vanity  Fair,  when 
casualty  lists  were  coming  in,  it  did  not  actually  touch  the 
rooted  population.  If  this  was  so  with  the  average  male 
civilian,  how  much  more  with  the  female!  But  now  it 
appears  that  the  civilian  cannot  be  left  out  of  the  business, 
and  that  the  female  may  be  as  destructive  as  the  male. 
Women — even  ladies  of  quality — can  actually  make  shells, 
nay,  according  to  Mr.  Asquith  who  saw  thousands  of  whilom 
dressmakers,  milliners  and  parlor-maids  at  their  fell  work, 
they  can  make  them  "  perhaps  a  little  better"  than  men — 
an  opinion  expressed  with  still  more  enthusiasm  by  that 
Special  Correspondent  of  the  Times  who  saw  "a  girl  doing 
a  particular  operation  on  a  lathe  which  had  been  previously 
worked  by  a  skilled  man."  She  was  doing,  he  records,  150 
per  shift  to  the  man's  30! 1  And  this  revelation  led  our  Arch 

1  "The  women  who  have  taken  the  place  of  men  in  various  trades  are  doing 
amazingly  good  work.  It  is  estimated  that  the  number  of  women  substi- 
tuted for  men  in  the  metal  trade  is  77,000,  in  the  leather  trades  14,000,  and 
in  miscellaneous  trades  274,000.  Besides  these  many  are  in  Government 
employment,  an  increasingly  large  body  are  in  commercial  houses,  and  a 
great  number  are  employed  in  the  dilution  of  labor  and  on  agricultural 
work.  .  .  .  And  they  are  doing  many  other  kinds  of  work  requiring  the 
employment  of  machinery  and  calling  for  great  skill."  (Mr.  Rundman, 
President  of  the  Board  of  Trade,  interview  with  Associated  Press,  New 
York,  March  20,  1916.) 

The  Ministry  of  Munitions  has  published  a  lavishly  illustrated  volume, 
showing  the  women  munitioneers  hi  their  many  new  r61es  as  engineers,  shell 
makers,  forewomen,  etc.,  with  a  preface  by  Mr.  Lloyd  George,  who  says  in 
brief  "The  women  are  splendid." 

"  The  General  Manager  of  the  Midland  Railway,  after  a  series  of  exacting 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  325 

Anti-Suffragist,  Mr.  Asquith,  to  the  surmise  that  possibly 
women  could  do  many  other  unexpected  things.  A  Daniel 
come  to  judgment,  indeed!  It  is  true  there  were — long  be- 
fore the  war — seven  million  women,  "  gainfully  occupied," 
but  the  State  had  never  yet  observed  them,  nor  ever  con- 
sidered their  employment  or  unemployment  a  factor  in 
social  phenomena.  To-day  every  eye  is  upon  Venus  rising — 
as  in  Botticelli's  picture — on  her  shell.  The  State  includes 
women  in  the  National  Register.  The  Times  devotes  to 
their  services  a  chapter  of  its  History  of  the  War.  The  War 
Office  publishes  the  names  of  dead  nurses  in  the  casualty 
lists. 

And  not  only  does  woman  feed  the  fighting  line  directly 
as  munition  maker,  horse  trainer  and  general  provider,  and 
tend  it  as  nurse,  doctor  and  ambulance  bearer,  it  has  been 
discovered  that  in  every  direction  she  can  relieve  man  and 
release  him  for  the  front.  In  the  antediluvian  age  before 
the  war,  any  feminine  encroachment  upon  the  male  pre- 
serve would  have  been  met — as  the  workmen  in  the  Brieux 
play,  La  Femme  Seule,  met  their  women  competitors — 
with  the  male  fist.  And  if  the  new  function  involved 
changes  of  vesture  or  appearance,  then  the  small  boy,  whom 
I  have  elsewhere  saluted  as  "the  scavenger  of  manners," 
would  have  made  life  unbearable  for  the  innovatress  until 
she  had  worn  him  out  by  multiplication.  But  to-day? 
Why,  the  mere  pictures  in  The  Times'  History  of  the  War 
reveal  women  (in  appropriate  costumes)  as  police  patrols, 
telegraph  messengers,  postwomen,  ploughwomen,  sheep 
shearers,  page-girls,  motorists,  van  drivers,  commission- 
working  tests,  has  confessed  that  the  efficiency  of  women  has  been  a  revela- 
tion to  him.  .  .  . 

"  In  one  case  two  women,  each  working  only  three  hours  overtime  per  week, 
are  doing  a  certain  job,  necessary  to  keep  a  shop  supplied  with  material, 
which  it  formerly  look  four  men,  working  in  night  and  day  shifts,  to  accom- 
plish." (World's  Work,  March,  1916.) 


326  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

aires,  railway  booking  clerks,  ticket  and  luggage  porters, 
omnibus  and  tram  conductresses,  bill-posters,  butchers  and 
bargees!  One  hears,  too,  of  female  grooms,  lamplighters, 
vets.,  cattle-droves,  scavengers  (in  new  overalls),  commercial 
travellers,  and  chartered  accountants.  There  is  even — O 
tempora,  O  mores — a  games-mistress  in  a  boys'  school !  The 
very  Government  offices — immemorial  abodes  of  the 
barnacle — have  women  clerks  and  lift  attendants.  What 
wonder  if  there  move  through  our  streets  without  raga- 
muffin rebuke  the  khaki-clad  warriors  of  the  Women's  Vol- 
unteer Reserve!  Some  Scotch  substitutes  for  men  have 
even  donned  the  breeks. 

But  in  addition  to  the  many  ways  in  which  woman  is 
actually  seen  stoking  the  furnaces  of  war,  there  is  a  growing 
recognition  that  even  the  woman  at  home  is  playing  her 
part  in  the  war.  That  men  must  fight  and  women  must 
weep  was  long  the  stock  argument  of  the  anti-suffragists — 
for  who  would  give  a  vote  to  tears?  In  vain  we  suffragists 
tried  to  make  them  understand  that  the  fighting  part  of  a 
nation  was  only  the  white-crested  wave  that  throws  itself 
furiously  on  the  shore — behind  it  was  the  whole  ocean  of 
national  energy.  In  vain  we  pointed  out  that  a  nation  was, 
after  all,  only  a  collection  of  homes,  and  that  it  was  from 
these  homes  that  all  the  national  strength  issued,  were  it 
but  in  the  shape  of  "man  that  is  born  of  woman"  or  re- 
sources born  of  both. 

To-day  press  megaphones  and  flamboyant  posters  have 
proclaimed  this  truth  to  the  dullest.  Every  hoarding  has 
shown  us  the  munition  maker  hand  in  hand  with  the  soldier; 
warriors  both.  The  War  Loan  carried  on  the  tale.  "Do 
you  want  to  save  our  sailors'  and  soldiers'  lives?"  women, 
no  less  than  men,  were  asked  in  great  Governmental  adver- 
tisements. "Do  you  want  to  bring  the  war  to  an  end?" 
"You  can  make  your  money  fight  for  you."  "If  you  can- 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  WOMEN  327 

not  use  the  sword  for  your  country,  you  can  use  your  pen 
by  filling  up  this  form."  One  of  the  latest  and  most  decora- 
tive of  these  posters,  though  bristling  with  cannon  and 
bayonets,  is  headed  simply,  "  Appeal  to  Women."  The 
silver  bullet,  in  short,  can  be  sped  by  a  woman's  hand,  and 
the  sinews  of  war  are  sexless.1 

With  half  a  million  German  women  making  war-material 
from  the  very  outbreak  of  war,  with  the  domesticated  Frau 
producing  forty  per  cent  of  the  explosives  and  fifty  per  cent 
of  the  equipment,  not  to  mention  her  replacing  railway, 
tramway  and  motor  men,  with,  in  fact,  over  two  million  of 
her  torn  from  the  kitchen  into  industrial  life,  it  could  hardly 
escape  attention  even  in  Germany  that  the  three  K's  had 
been  transcended,  and  that  the  great  male  K  (Krieg  or 
Khaki)  was  not  so  outside  the  female  province  as  that 
arrant  K,  the  Kaiser,  had  imagined.2 

1  My  wise  Englishwoman,  in  sending  me  an  appeal  she  had  received  from 
the  Treasury,  headed  "Self-Interest  and  Patriotism"  writes:  "The  German 
Government  has  no  monopoly  of  vulgarity.     Could  you  not  make  some 
protest?    I  love  a  battle  cry,  'St.  George  for  merry  England,'  'God  and  the 
right,'  even  the  shout  of  the  Dundee  contingent  in  their  charge  'Marmalade 
for  ever'  warms  my  heart,  for  I  know  what  they  meant;  but  what  is  the 
meaning  of  '  Self-interest  and  patriotism ' — it  is  worse  than  '  God  and  Mam- 
mon!' for  it  is  really  'Mammon  and  God,'  which  is  even  inferior  in  its  lilt. 

"What  has  struck  me  most  painfully  since  the  beginning  of  the  war  has 
been  the  lack  of  imagination  in  the  rich,  who  rule  the  modern  world.  Instead 
of  inspiring  the  rest  of  us  with  noble  example,  they  repress  us  both  by  precept 
(and  such  a  precept)  and  example.  What  even  is  the  good  of  their  boasted 
sacrifice  of  their  sons,  when  they  will  not  sacrifice  their  dividends?  English- 
men need  no  example  of  courage  from  then*  social  superiors;  the  miners  and 
the  stokers  and  the  countless  unknown  heroes,  who  have  been  always  about 
us  in  our  everyday  lives  are  brave  by  nature,  but  our  generous  race  is  still 
childish  in  its  attitude  towards  wealth,  though  the  mass  of  us  are  not  so  vul- 
gar as  'the  Treasury.'  May  not  the  working  class  refusal  to  take  up  the  war 
loan  be  a  spiritual  perception  of  the  dangers  of  investments?  " 

2  "  Before  the  war  the  German  women,  with  all  their  incontestable  ex- 
cellence, always  appeared  to  me  somewhat  ridiculous  in  the  way  they 
'looked  up'  to  every  member  of  the  stronger  sex,  even  the  most  insignificant. 
Now  they  have  an  air  of  fearlessness  and  of  conscious  self-control.  They  give 


328  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

As  the  Frankfurter  Zeitung  confessed  with  characteristic 
German  thoroughness,  "Many  of  us  have  in  these  months 
felt  it  to  be  a  defect  that  in  Germany  the  State,  with  its 
system  of  universal  service,  embraces  only  the  men,  and 
then  only  in  so  far  as  they  are  capable  of  bearing  arms.  This 
system  was  decided  upon  at  a  time  when  wars  were  con- 
ducted with  weapons  only,  and  it  no  longer  fits  the  present 
state  of  things,  in  which  everything,  gold  and  food,  indus- 
trial products  and  science,  is  a  means  of  carrying  on  war, 
and  in  which  the  war  itself  consists  to  a  great  extent  of 
scientific  and  economic  labor." 

War  consists  to  a  great  extent  of  scientific  and  economic 
labor!  So  at  last  man  has  discovered  mid-day  at  twelve 
o'clock!  " Every  pit  is  a  trench,  every  workshop  a  ram- 
part," cries  Lloyd  George,  vividly  lamenting  the  legions  of 
miners  and  munition-makers  a  short-sighted  policy  had 
lured  to  Flanders.  Armageddon  may  even,  it  appears, 
finally  hinge  on  the  manufacture  of  machine-tools.  With 
war  thus  got  beyond  the  tomahawk  stage,  the  poor  squaw 
can  now  as  little  be  excluded  from  the  tug  of  it  as  she  ever 
was  from  the  misery  and  murderousness  of  it.  Indeed, 
according  to  the  Times  correspondent,  "the  full  utilization 
of  the  resources  already  in  sight  depends  on  female  labor." 
Battles  are  won  in  the  factory  as  well  as  the  field,  and  in  the 
cornfield  no  less  than  the  field  of  war.  They  were  always 
won  in  the  kitchen  and  the  nursery.1 

an  impression  of  having  realized  what  they  now  have  to  perform,  of  their  new 
position  in  a  community  where  in  so  many  directions  they  are  taking  the 
place  of  men." — (A  Swedish  Correspondent,  Times,  March  22, 1916.) 

The  digging  of  earth  for  the  "  Underground  "  beneath  the  Friedrich- 
strasse  in  Berlin  was  entirely  transferred  to  women  who  worked  day  and 
night. 

1  It  is  a  thousand  pities  that  the  national  housekeeping  was  not  done  by 
one  of  the  sex  that  has  always  had  to  squeeze  and  manage.  We  should  have 
escaped  the  enormous  waste  of  the  war,  the  mines  of  buried  bully-beef,  etc. 
When  a  woman  cook  was  tried  on  Salisbury  Plain,  she  saved  thousands  of 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  329 

But  it  is  characteristic  of  the  titanic,  humorless  Teuton 
that,  having  at  last  discovered  the  importance  of  the  other 
sex,  he  proceeds  to  glorify,  not  woman,  but  the  German 
woman — notoriously  the  least  attractive  type  in  Europe. 
This  creature  is,  according  to  the  Berlin  Post,  to  rear  a  race 
of  demi-gods  and  take  "her  predestined  place  on  the  throne 
as  queen  over  all  her  sisters,  the  adored  from  afar  by  the 
men  of  all  classes,  the  mate  of  the  Germans  only." 

The  game  of  "Cherchez  la  Femme"  has  so  long  distorted 
the  French  vision  that  France  cannot  even  now  find  her  as 
quickly  as  Germany  has  done.  For  Germany  had  only  to 
open  its  eyes  to  see :  whereas  the  long  practice  of  the  leer  had 
given  France  a  permanent  squint. 

In  the  German  railways,  tramways  and  shops  a  system- 
atic substitution  of  women  for  men  began  simultaneously 
with  the  mobilization  of  the  army,  in  France  the  substituted 
reserve  was,  as  far  as  possible,  drawn  from  males  too  old 
or  too  young  for  war;  and,  although  women  did  largely 
replace  men,  it  was  mainly  as  a  family  affair.  Mothers, 
sisters,  daughters,  wives,  stepped  into  the  breach  less  as 
women  than  as  relatives.  This  was  natural  enough  on  the 
land  where  the  women  have  absolutely  replaced  the  men, 
even  to  the  hardest  ploughing.  But  the  same  system  has 
prevailed  outside  the  home.  The  Paris  "Underground" 
set  the  example — which  was  largely  followed — of  inviting 
the  women  of  the  family  to  occupy  the  places  of  their 
menkind  and  keep  them  warm  till  their  return.  Even 
when,  alas!  they  are  not  to  return  the  principle  is  recognized. 
The  Government  has  chosen  the  relatives  of  fallen  soldiers  to 
work  in  the  base  establishments  of  the  French  Army.  And 
in  philanthropy,  no  less  than  in  industry,  woman  has  not 
asserted  herself  as  an  independent  sex,  with  separate  or- 

pounds,  not  to  mention  the  better  and  more  varied  dietary.    Army  cooks 
are  now  fast  becoming  female. 


330  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

ganizations.  Thus  in  France  woman  is  still  not  "on  her 
own."  Nevertheless,  since  many  of  the  males,  alas!  will 
never  come  back  to  their  posts,  some  of  this  new  labor 
must  inevitably  escape  dislodgment  at  the  end  of  the  war. 
Not  by  thus  evading  the  labor  problem  of  women  can 
France  circumvent  it. 

In  the  higher  circles  of  French  femininity  there  is  even 
less  change.  The  Germans  may  capture  French  provinces, 
they  cannot  shake  the  fortress  of  French  convention.  War- 
charity  among  the  grandes  dames,  if  on  a  magnified  scale, 
moves  in  the  old  social  grooves  and  cliques,  and  is  run  with 
the  same  fashionable  Catholic  machinery.  Nor  has  the 
jeune  fille  bien  elevee  been  free  to  choose  her  own  "good 
work,"  though,  like  a  lay  nun,  she  has  been  given  plenty. 
But  the  mondaine  has  not  abandoned  her  frivolity,  nor  has 
the  war — after  the  first  panic  and  in  despite  of  the  billowing 
crape  in  the  streets — succeeded  in  spoiling  the  appearance 
of  the  Parisienne.  Paris  still  rules  the  fashions  as  Britannia 
the  waves. 

Italy  falls  even  below  France  in  the  handling  of 
the  woman  question.  At  the  outset  of  the  war  woman- 
conductors  were  hooted  off  the  trams.  Decidedly  the 
Latin  races  have  a  larger  ohmage  than  the  Saxon. 

II.     WOMAN  AS  FIGHTER 
"Babe  Christabel  was  royally  born." — GERALD  MASSEY. 

And  all  this  new  activity  and  all  this  reinterpretation 
and  recognition  of  old  activity  takes  place  in  the  fierce 
light  that  beats  upon  a  boom.  Had  not  the  female  suffrage 
question  been  set  in  violent  motion  by  the  Pankhursts, 
it  is  possible  that  the  object  lessons  of  the  war  would  not 
have  been  reaped  for  the  benefit  of  the  cause.  Even  a 
partisan  of  the  feminine  vote  like  Mr.  Lloyd  George  must 


THE  WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  331 

find  fresh  food  for  sympathy  as  he  rides  in  his  motor-car 
under  the  skilled  steerswomanship  of  his  chauffeuse,  Miss 
Caroline  Marsh,  the  celebrated  hunger-striker.  And  noth- 
ing has  more  contributed  to  the  sinking  in  of  these  morals 
than  the  wise  and  patriotic  action  of  the  Pankhursts  in 
suspending  their  militancy,  whose  relative .  innocuousness 
was,  moreover,  suddenly  revealed  by  the  bonfires  of  the 
man-made  hell.  The  Suffragette,  still  doggedly  declaring 
that  there  was  no  way  of  winning  the  vote  save  by  fighting, 
and  that  in  the  impossibility  of  fighting,  it  was  useless  going 
on,  suspended  publication.  The  other  suffrage  parties 
which  had  not  placed  their  trust  in  their  fighting  power, 
found  no  such  difficulty  in  continuing  their  organs,  even 
though  their  activities  were  mainly  transferred  to  relief 
work  and  military  service  of  every  kind,  for  which  their 
existing  organization  of  women  provided  a  ready-made 
machinery.  The  National  League  for  Opposing  Woman 
Suffrage  pursued  similarly  the  path  of  beneficence,  so  that 
the  suffrage  movement  may  be  congratulated  on  having 
called  into  existence  this  valuable  federation  of  female 
activities.  The  anti-suffragist  women  had  always  occupied 
a  Gilbertian  platform  in  emphasizing  from  it  that  woman's 
place  was  the  home,  and  the  paradox  was  not  diminished 
by  the  attempt  to  eke  out  its  negations  by  a  demand  for 
the  municipal  franchise.  For  it  is  obvious  that  the  female 
anti-suffragist,  like  Aristotle's  sceptic,  cannot  stir  a  finger 
without  self-contradiction.  The  crowning  irony  was  her 
enlistment  in  the  khaki-clad  ranks  of  the  Volunteer  Train- 
ing Corps  and  the  National  Reserve.  No  wonder  she  made 
a  point  of  "eschewing  advertisement"  and  with  "patriotic 
abnegation"  silently  absorbing  herself  in  other  female 
bodies.  A  militant  anti-suffragist  might  have  touched 
even  Mrs.  Humphry  Ward's  sense  of  humor. 

There  was  once  a  social  state  composed  of  families,  each 


332  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

unit  circling  round  and  represented  by  the  male  bread- 
winner. He  went  out.  into  the  hurly-burly;  the  woman 
remained  the  delicate  flower  of  the  home.  It  was  a  concep- 
tion not  without  its  beauty.  For  this  it  is  now  sought  to 
substitute  families  with  a  dual  center,  and  equal  rights 
in  the  hurly-burly  for  both  sexes.  It  is  a  conception  not 
without  its  ugliness.  But  the  striving  for  it  is  not  a  mere 
play  of  the  brain.  The  female  flowers  have  been  already 
flung  out  of  the  home;  millions  of  Englishwomen  even 
before  the  war  had  been  driven  into  factories,  shops  and 
offices.1  The  anti-suffragists  did  not  attempt  to  drive 
back  this  labor  into  the  security  and  sanctity  of  the  home, 
and  the  attempt  to  secure  for  it  the  same  political  status 
as  male  labor  they  combated.  Placed  between  two  worlds, 
they  made  the  worst  of  both. 

Their  arch-antagonist,  Miss  Christabel  Pankhurst,  as 
soon  as  war  broke  out,  abandoned  her  place  of  exile  in 
France  to  tour  in  the  States  as  a  champion  of  England,  and 
rendered  valuable  service  in  that  hot-bed  of  pro-Germanism 
by.  her  oratorical  and  dialectical  powers;  her  repartee, 
sharpened  by  years  of  practice  against  the  Briton,  galling 
now  the  German-American.  Possibly  there  was  in  this 
campaign  of  hers  some  of  the  remorse  and  zeal  of  the  con- 
vert. Possibly  she  felt  she  owed  reparation  to  England 
for  being  one  of  the  factors  that  had  inclined  the  Kaiser  to 
war  by  causing  him  to  miscalculate  the  internal  schisms 
of  England.  At  any  rate  the  tyranny  and  truculence  of 
which  she  had  for  years  accused  the  British  Government 
became  now  the  peculiar  property  of  Prussia,  while  England 
loomed  as  Liberty's  one  homestead  and  safeguard.  On 

1  According  to  an  investigation  by  the  Fabian  Women's  Group,  reported 
on  by  Ellen  Smith,  slightly  over  51  per  cent  of  these  women  workers  main- 
tain nearly  thrice  their  own  number  of  other  persons  (more  than  seven  to 
every  four),  thus  playing  the  part  of  the  breadwinner  popularly  limited  to 
the  male. 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  333 

her  return  from  this  penitential  pilgrimage  she  abounded 
even  more  in  this  sense.  The  Suffragette  was  revived. 
But  the  re-born  offspring  was  no  longer  the  legitimate 
organ  of  the  movement.  It  should  rather  have  been  called 
the  "War  Baby,"  so  unmistakably  was  it  a  child  of  military 
passion.  (It  is  significant  that  the  care  of  the  war  babies 
is  precisely  the  task  selected  by  the  Pankhursts  from  all 
the  philanthropic  possibilities.)  Not  one  of  the  Press 
demagogues  who  daily  or  weekly  whip  up  the  beast  in  man, 
not  one  of  the  militarists  who  are  out  to  crush  militarism, 
could  vie  with  Christabel  Pankhurst  in  her  impassioned 
torrents  of  Jingoese.  The  worst  extravagances  of  our 
Junker  journalists  were  outdone.  I  know  no  male  fire- 
eater  who  has  set  forth  so  drastic  a  programme  as  this 
"female  of  the  species." 

"Institute  compulsory  national  service,  military  and 
industrial.  Tighten  the  blockade  so  that  Germany  shall 
not  receive  a  single  thing  helpful  to  them  in  the  prosecu- 
tion of  the  war.  Purify  the  official  organization  of  the 
country  of  naturalized  Germans  and  of  Germans  born  in 
England  but  of  German  blood.  Purify  it,  too,  of  any  of 
British  blood  who  may  be  pro-German  or  half-hearted  in 
the  prosecution  of  the  war."  Even  "true-born  English- 
men," you  see,  less  bellicose  than  the  majority,  are  to  be 
kicked  out  of  England!  And  it  is  only  the  other  day  that 
the  papers  were  discussing  what  island  could  serve  as  the 
St.  Helena  of  the  suffragettes. 

Of  course,  this  root-and-branch  rodomontade  is  only 
another  illustration  of  her  head-long  extremism,  of  her 
crude  conception  of  statesmanship  as  militancy,  and  of 
tactics  as  invariably  frontal  and  furious.  The  climax  of  this 
raging,  tearing  campaign  was  reached  when  among  the  men 
"half-hearted  in  the  prosecution  of  the  war"  were  suddenly 
included  Mr.  Asquith  and  Sir  Edward  Grey.  A  "Great 


334  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

Patriotic  Meeting,"  called  at  the  Albert  Hall,  was  revealed 
at  the  eleventh  hour  as  designed  to  hurl  them  from  power — 
a  revelation  which  explained  why  the  Times  had  been 
daily  devoting  to  the  mere  preliminary  booming  of  the 
meeting  ten  times  the  space  it  had  accorded  to  the  most 
important  and  sensational  suffrage  gatherings  at  this  same 
hall.  The  manoeuvre  was  circumvented  through  the  im- 
mediate refusal  of  the  hall  by  its  proprietors.1 

Infinitely  more  popular  have  been  the  furious  rushes 
directed  by  the  Pankhursts  against  the  Union  of  Democratic 
Control,  a  body  constituted  of  the  very  men  who  first 
risked  their  reputation  on  behalf  of  her  derided  movement. 
Not  that  they  had  not  already  been  castigated  the  moment 
they  had  disagreed  with  her  tactics.  But  she  might  have 
remembered  that  the  Union  was  the  first  political  body 
to  announce  that  by  " Democratic  Control"  it  meant  a 
joint  government  of  men  and  women,  and  that  its  object 
was  to  sweep  away  the  secret  diplomacy  and  veiled  autoc- 
racy that  nullify  the  male  vote,  and  will  make  the  female 
vote,  when  it  is  obtained,  equally  ineffective  in  the  vast 
issues  of  peace  and  war.  These  issues  mould  our  lives  far 
more  than  the  questions  we  are  permitted  to  vote  upon, 
and  to  bring  them  equally  under  the  sphere  of  the  vote 
must  be  the  desire  of  every  suffragist.  But  then  there 
never  was  a  person  more  essentially  anti-suffragist  than 
Christabel  Pankhurst.  Nobody  has  ever  been  allowed  a 
vote  in  the  affairs  of  her  union.  She  is  simply  a  dictator, 
born  out  of  her  due  sex  and  time.  It  happened  that  the 
state  of  society  afforded  no  scope  for  her  natural  driving 
power,  and  so  she  was  reduced  to  the  leadership  of  women. 
But  her  constant  obsession  with  the  image  of  Joan  of  Arc 

1  Lord  Willoughby  de  Broke  was  to  have  been  the  chief  speaker.  A  circu- 
lar, now  before  me,  signed  by  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  says  "  the  Prime  Minister  and 
Sir  Edward  Grey  are  unfit  for  their  positions." 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  335 

shows — as  the  psycho-analyst  would  say — that  all  along 
she  has  sub-consciously  hankered  to  lead  men.  For  Joan 
of  Arc  did  not  win  the  battles  of  France  with  an  army  of 
Amazons.  Now,  spurring  and  cheering  on  the  army  of 
men,  bidding  them  roll  their  enemies  in  the  dust,  Miss 
Pankhurst  is  at  last  in  her  true  element.  And  the  word 
"  Purge,  purge,"  which  she  ingeminates,  recalls  her  other 
ambition  to  be  Cromwell — the  Cromwell  of  "Pride's  Purge " 
and  "Take  away  that  bauble."  She  actually  calls  for  a 
Cromwell  to  purge  a  certain  London  club  of  its  "pro- 
Germans."  And  her  following  has  changed  with  her  pro- 
gramme. Of  the  Women's  Social  and  Political  Union, 
practically  only  the  name  remains,  and  of  the  Suffragette 
not  even  the  name,  for  it  has  recently  become  Britannia 
who  has  only  in  common  with  the  Suffragette  that  she  is 
a  female.  Even  Britannia  now  stands  suppressed  for 
super-patriotic  scandal-mongering.  No  wonder  the  protes- 
tants  of  the  union  call  for  balance  and  balance-sheets,  in 
the  fear  that  the  Pankhursts  are  giving  up  to  England  what 
was  meant  for  the  suffragist  war-chest.1 

But  with  the  larger  public,  of  course — apart  from  the 
Albert  Hall  mistake,  and  even  that  had  its  votaries  and 
coteries — the  new  Pankhurst  programme  is  immensely 
popular.  Philistine  M.  P.'s  have  supported  their  meetings, 
bishops  blessed  their  propaganda,  noble  lords  prosed  on 
their  platform,  genteel  ladies  walked  in  their  processions — 
processions  actually  paid  for  by  the  Minister  of  Munitions, 

1 A  manifesto  adopted  at  a  meeting  on  November  29,  1915,  complains  that 
the  W.  S.  P.  U.  was  virtually  disbanded  and  there  had  been  no  balance- 
sheet  since  Spring,  1914.  "My  mother  and  I  intend  to  remain,"  was  Miss 
Pankhurst's  reply.  "By  the  constitution  we  cannot  resign."  The  protest- 
ants  now  publish  a  monthly  paper  of  their  own  called  The  Suffragette 
News  Sheet.  Miss  Sylvia  Pankhurst,  who  has  entirely  broken  away  from 
her  mother  and  sister,  has  a  formula  of  her  own,  "Human  Suffrage,"  and  a 
paper  of  her  own  called  The  Woman's  Dreadnought,  a  bold  pacifist  labor  and 
anti-Imperialistic  organ,  the  exact  antithesis  of  Britannia. 


336  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

their  whilom  bete  noire,  Mr.  Lloyd  George — to  demand 
the  free  and  equal  right  to  make  explosives,  and  the  papers 
have  photographed  and  puffed  them.  Reported  at  last 
and  at  length  by  the  great  organs  that  had  boycotted  her, 
acclaimed  by  the  great  mobs  that  had  clamored  to  duck 
her,  Christabel  Pankhurst,  in  the  new-born  Suffragette, 
cried  in  capital  letters  with  a  lack  of  humor  that  touched 
the  sublime: 

"TRUST  THE  PEOPLE  AND  DEFY  THE  CRANKS" 

It  is  a  tragic  circle  in  human  affairs  that  the  ex-martyr 
becomes  the  parvenu  persecutor.  But  this  assimilation  of 
the  Pankhursts  to  the  mob  is  an  asset  to  their  cause  proper. 
The  masses,  taught  thus  to  find  in  woman  so  potent  a 
reinforcement  of  their  prejudices,  will  come  to  recognize 
how  stupid  was  the  anti-suffrage  policy  which  deprived  them 
of  so  valuable  an  ally.  It  was  always  the  fatal  mistake  of 
Miss  Pankhurst  to  overlook  that  woman's  suffrage  was 
essentially  a  man's  question,  that  in  man's  hands  lay  the 
ultimate  power  of  granting  or  withholding  it,  and  that  only 
by  pleasing  men  could  women — in  the  last  analysis — 
achieve  their  emancipation.  Now  that  by  a  happy  accident 
the  Pankhursts'  platform  coincides  with  that  of  the  man  in 
the  street,  now  that  the  Pankhursts  are  able  to  "feed  the 
brute"  with  his  own  gross  diet,  they  stand  far  nearer  his 
heart  and  their  goal.  Not  to  fight  man  but  to  second  and 
sponge  him  in  his  own  fight  is  the  road  to  female  suffrage. 
The  palm  denied  to  the  Christian  martyr  will  be  won  by  the 
recruiting  sergeant. 

The  tragedy  of  this  degeneration  lies  not  in  the  character 
of  Christabel  Pankhurst — which  is  unchanged  and  un- 
changeable— but  in  the  character  of  Mrs.  Pankhurst,  pos- 
sessed by  the  daimon  of  her  daughter.  It  is  impossible  to 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  337 

read  the  earlier  speeches  of  Mrs.  Pankhurst  without  seeing 
that  in  her  the  age  had  produced  one  of  those  rare  spirits 
who  come  to  interpret  and  incarnate  the  great  saying  of 
St.  Paul  to  the  Corinthians:  "Hopeth  all  things,  suffereth 
all  things,  believeth  all  things."  The  first  Mrs.  Pankhurst 
knew  that  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  suffereth  no  violence 
and  is  not  taken  by  assault,  and  her  victory,  had  it  come 
then,  would  have  been  a  victory  for  "female"  suffrage,  for 
the  contribution  of  gentleness  and  social  reform  which 
woman  has  to  bring  to  politics.  Her  victory,  when  it  comes 
now,  will  be  only  a  victory  for  a  swashbuckling  suffrage, 
apparelled  at  all  points  like  a  man. 

III.     WOMAN  AS  PEACEMAKER 

"  Joyez  la  paix  vivante  au  milieu  de  la  guerre, — 1' Antigone  eternelle 
qui  se  refuse  a  la  haine  et  qui,  lorsqu'ils  souffrent,  ne  sait  plus  dis- 
tinguer  entre  ses  freres  ennemis." — ROMAIN  HOLLAND. 

Happily,  other  women  have  appeared,  not  so  content  as 
the  Pankhursts  "to  play  the  sedulous  ape"  to  man,  or  to  be 
dominated  by  his  outlook.  The  women  who  met  at  The 
Hague  in  an  international  congress  that  embraced  both 
English  women  and  German  women,  had  anticipated  Ro- 
main  Rolland's  appeal  to  women  to  cease  to  be  "men's 
shadows."  "The  women  who  do  not  fight  have  no  right  to 
goad  on  the  fight,"  said  the  distinguished  French  women 
who  addressed  a  greeting  to  the  congress.  And  they  laid 
down  "the  fundamental  principle  of  feminism"  as  "the 
wish  to  create,  while  destroying  war,  a  better  and  juster 
humanity."  Just  because  they  had  no  political  voice  in 
any  of  the  belligerent  countries,  it  was  for  them  now  to  say 
what  the  men  who  were  fighting  could  not  say,  and  to  pre- 
serve the  spirit  of  international  fraternity.  And  so  this 
congress  of  women,  from  a  dozen  nations,  under  the  pres- 


338  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

idency  of  Jane  Addams,  protested  unanimously  against 
"the  madness  and  horror  of  war,"  believing  with  Queen 
Elinor  in  King  John: 

"  This  might  have  been  prevented  and  made  whole 
By  very  easy  arguments  of  love, 
Which  now  the  manage  of  two  kingdoms  must 
With  fearful  bloody  issue  arbitrate." 

The  congress  protested,  too,  against  the  assumption  that 
women  were  protected  in  the  war,  and  adjured  "the  Gov- 
ernments of  the  world"  to  put  an  end  to  it.  Nor  was  their 
protest  to  be  platonic.  Under  the  inspiration  of  the  prac- 
tical and  elaborately  worked  out  project  by  Miss  Julia 
Wales,  of  Wisconsin  University,  entitled  "Continuous 
Mediation  without  Armistice,"  it  was  resolved  to  try  to 
create  a  conference  of  neutral  nations  for  this  purpose,  also 
"to  invite  suggestions  for  settlement  from  each  of  the 
belligerent  nations,"  and  in  any  case  to  submit  simul- 
taneously to  all  of  them  "reasonable  proposals  as  a  basis  of 
peace."  Women  would,  in  fact,  try  to  mediate  between 
their  males,  as  one  tries  to  disentangle  dogs.  Nay,  more, 
the  women  have  actually  gone  out  from  this  congress — 
like  Queen's  Messengers — and  have  been  received  by  kings, 
premiers  and  presidents.  The  scheme  of  "continuous 
mediation"  has  been  adopted  likewise  by  the  Quakers, 
and  is  said  to  be  regarded  by  some  Governments  as  "the 
sanest  plan  yet  suggested."  For  climax,  the  congress  re- 
solved that  an  international  meeting  of  women  shall  be  held 
in  the  same  town  and  at  the  same  time  as  the  Congress  of 
Powers  that  is  to  frame  the  terms  of  the  peace  settlement 
after  the  war,  for  the  purpose  of  presenting  practical  pro- 
posals to  this  conference.  Women  will  be  "men's  shadows," 
but  in  what  a  novel  sense !  Side  by  side  with  the  portentous 
and  pontifical  male  congress  which  has  always  hitherto  done 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  339 

the  carving  of  the  nations,  and  never  failed  to  make  a  hash 
of  it,  will  sit — like  sober  peahens  beside  their  peacocks — 
a  body  of  women  interpreting  national  dignity  and  sov- 
ereignty and  all  the  grandiose  vocabulary  of  the  male  in 
terms  of  human  life. 

"We  women  judge  war  differently  from  men/'  said 
Dr.  Aletta  Jacobs,  the  Dutch  initiatress  of  the  Peace  Con- 
gress. "Men  consider  in  the  first  place  the  economic  re- 
sults, the  extension  of  power  and  so  forth.  But  what  is 
material  loss  to  us  women  in  comparison  to  the  number  of 
fathers,  husbands,  brothers  and  sons  who  march  out  to  war 
never  to  return?  We  women  consider  above  all  the  damage 
to  the  race  resulting  from  war  and  the  grief  and  the  pain 
and  the  misery  it  entails."  That  woman  should  thus  revise 
what  Thackeray  called  "the  devil's  code  of  honor"  is  not 
surprising,  for  she  has  actually  borne  in  pain  and  reared  in 
sick  anxiety  the  body  it  is  proposed  to  mutilate.  "Unruly  " 
as  Shakespeare's  Duchess  of  York,  she  cries  to  her  lord: 

"  Hadst  thou  groaned  for  him 
As  I  have  done,  thou'dst  be  more  pitiful." 

I  do  not  forget  the  Spartan  mother  who  bade  her  son 
return  with  his  shield  or  on  it.  But  that  mother  had  had 
no  chance  of  developing  an  outlook  of  her  own.  Sparta  was 
not  so  much  a  State  as  a  barrack;  every  mother's  son,  unless 
he  had  been  killed  off  as  too  sickly  for  a  soldier,  was  taken 
from  her  at  the  age  of  seven  to  be  stupefied  by  drill.  She 
could  only  please  her  master  by  exaggerated  echoes  of  his 
"Laconic"  wisdom.  To-day  even  in  the  Sparta  of  Prussia 
Clara  Zetkin  and  other  women  have  courted  martyrdom  by 
their  protests  against  the  war.  And  the  wisdom  of  even  the 
male  peacemaker  is  no  longer  to  go  unquestioned,  for,  as  we 
have  seen,  woman  has  resolved  to  shadow  the  Peace  Congress 
and  send  it  suggestions.  There  is  a  certain  high  comedy  in 


340  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

the  situation  because  everything  will  probably  have  been 
cut-and-dried  beforehand  by  secret  treaty,  as  it  was  at  the 
Congress  of  Berlin.  But  what  a  stride  forward  in  the  posi- 
tion of  woman  since  1878  when  Beaconsfield  and  Bismarck 
remodelled  Europe  with  results  that  are  before  us!  It  is 
she  who  aspires  to  save  civilization  in  the  collapse  of  the 
politicians,  and  religion  in  the  break-down  of  the  bishops. 
Not  every  pious  lady  has  been  making  shells  on  Sunday,  and 
Christianity  never  had  a  nobler  and  more  eloquent  apostle 
than  Miss  Maude  Royden,  touring  heathen  Britain  in  a 
van,  or  Miss  Cavell,  laying  down  her  life  with  the  immortal 
sentence,  "Patriotism  is  not  enough."  The  " imperishable 
story  of  her  latest  hours,"  declared  the  Premier  to  the  Com- 
mons, "has  taught  the  bravest  of  us  the  supreme  lesson  of 
courage."  "Yes,  sir,"  he  added  emphatically,  "and  in  the 
United  Kingdom  and  throughout  the  Dominions  of  the 
Crown  there  are  thousands  of  such  women,  and  a  year  ago 
we  did  not  know  it."  What  a  confession!  For  seven  years 
thousands  of  women  had  been  martyrizing  themselves  for 
the  cause  of  female  freedom,  and  the  Prime  Minister  and 
Parliament  did  not  know  such  women  existed! l  No  wonder 

1  On  this  point  my  wise  Englishwoman  writes:  "I  thoroughly  sympathize 
with  your  stupefaction  over  Mr.  Asquith's  ignorance  of  his  fellow-country- 
women. The  beautiful  thing  about  Edith  Cavell  is  that  she  is  typical  of 
what  is  finest  in  us — like  Correggio  before  the  masterpieces  of  Rome,  one 
may  say,  'I  too,  am  a  woman' — and  I  have  known  char-women  and  washer- 
women, who  have  made  one  inclined  to  say  the  same.  But  I  beat  you  as  well 
as  Mr.  Asquith  in  one  bit  of  knowledge — it  needed  no  suffragetting  to  teach 
me  a  woman's  capacity  for  martyrdom.  And  now  with  the  cussedness  of  my 
kind,  I  frankly  declare  'I  don't  like  Martyrs'  and  I  should  not  give  Edith 
Cavell  that  doubtful  title — a  brave  Englishwoman,  who  like  More's  Utopi- 
ans, went  to  meet  death  cheerfully. 

"The  most  interesting  point  that  I  have  noticed  in  this  war  is  a  diminished 
fear  of  death  amongst  us.  This  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  war,  which  re- 
veals but  did  not  create  that  attitude  of  mind, — it  seems  to  me  largely  due 
to  the  diminished  fear  of  hell,  which  had  so  long  obsessed  mankind.  ]n  the 
Boer  war  I  noticed  most  that  when  we  had  reverses  in  South  Africa,  re- 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   WOMEN  341 

the  seventh  centenary  of  Magna  Charta — entirely  ignored 
by  Englishmen — was  celebrated  this  year  only  by  the 
Women's  Freedom  League.1 

Thus  there  is  solid  ground  for  confidence  that  the  en- 
franchisement of  women  will  not  end  in  the  addition  of 
ten  million  pseudo-males  to  the  electorate.  What  Mr. 
Roosevelt — in  his  gentle  voice — calls  the  shrieking  sister- 
hood, will  not  merely  echo  the  bawling  brotherhood.  Much 
more  likely  is  it  that  the  pseudo-chivalry  of  the  male,  with 
all  its  glittering  mediaeval  lumber,  will  be  swept  away  by 
female  common  sense  as  remorselessly  as  his  military 
plumes  and  laces  have  been  shorn  away  by  the  shears  of 
necessity.  Woman  will  play  the  Sancho  Panza  to  the 
demented  Don  Quixote,  with  his  babble  of  "battles,  en- 
chantments, adventures,  extravagances,  combats  and  chal- 
lenges," and  where  he  saw  two  mighty  armies  with  pomp 
and  pageantry  of  "arms,  colors,  devices  and  mottoes," 
she  will  see  only  the  two  flocks  of  sheep  that  were  really 
there,  obscured  by  the  cloud  of  dust:  the  dumb  herds  driven 
to  slaughter  and  lost  in  the  dust  thrown  into  the  world's 
eyes  by  politicians  and  poets.  She  will  see  Rozinante,  not 
as  the  war-horse  clothed  in  thunder,  but  as  the  lean  starve- 
ling hack  of  reality,  and  Dulcinea,  in  whose  honor  the 
battle  is  joined,  as  the  frowsy  hoyden  she  is.  There  are 
indeed  a  few  men  who  can  see  through  the  dust  almost  as 
clearly  as  women.  "Only  the  other  day,"  complains  the 
Times  of  July  lyth,  "a  member  of  Parliament  was  talking 
about  the  money  that  would  be  wanted  for  housing  after 
the  war,  and,  evidence  is  always  cropping  up  to  show  that 
social  reform  still  fills  the  minds  of  politicians  and  officials 

cruiting  was  stimulated  instead  of  discouraged.  Then  I  knew  that,  even 
among  the  well-to-do,  our  old  courage  remained  intact." 

1  With  so  many  young  male  idealists  killed  off,  the  r61e  of  women  as  torch 
bearers  of  civilization  will  become  increasingly  important. 


342  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

as  the  real  business  before  them.  The  war  is  only  an  epi- 
sode in  their  lives."  Degenerate  Britons!  How — as  Roose- 
velt witheringly  puts  it — shall  milk-and  water  match 
blood-and-iron?  Unfortunately,  Miss  Margaret  Scott  tells 
us  that  without  a  quart  of  milk  a  day  a  sturdy  soldier  can- 
not be  reared;  and  it  would  even  seem  as  if  "social  reform" 
is  as  necessary  to  safeguard  the  population  as  trenches 
and  field-guns. 

One  of  the  few  genuine  "war-profits"  has  been  the  at- 
tention drawn  to  the  cradle  as  the  real  "cradle  of  liberty." 
A  meeting  at  the  Guildhall,  presided  over  by  the  Lord 
Mayor,  for  the  reduction  of  the  wastage  of  child-life,  took 
on  for  the  first  time  the  true  guise  of  a  "great  patriotic 
meeting."  The  war,  though  war-wages  and  allowances 
have  nourished  the  mothers  as  never  before,  has  also  taken 
many  from  the  nursery  or  exposed  them — in  the  first 
rapture  of  handling  money  without  even  the  necessity  of 
feeding  their  lords — to  the  temptation  of  drink:  they  have 
taken  man's  place  in  the  tap-room,  as  everywhere  else. 
Hence  even  politicians  have  begun  to  see  the  need  of  look- 
ing after  our  first  future  line  of  defence — our  infantry. 

Historians  tell  us  that  the  Crusades,  designed  to  win  the 
tomb  of  Christ,  promoted  commercial  intercourse  between 
East  and  West.  Germany,  setting  out  to  assert  the  male 
ideal,  has  given  an  immense  jog  to  the  feminine.  But  the 
price  would  have  staggered  the  optimism  of  Pangloss. 
Ho-ti,  whose  house  must  be  burnt  down  before  he  could 
taste  crackling,  roasted  his  pig  infinitely  cheaper.  The 
loss  of  legions  of  young  men  (some  of  them  even  by  mar- 
riage to  French  or  Flanders  lasses)  will  increase  the  number 
of  spinsters,  who  will  clamor  with  increasing  outspokenness 
for  a  revised  sex  ethic.1  The  entry  of  women  into  so  many 

1  Males  have  already  begun  to  clamor  from  another  point  of  view.  "The 
time  is  coming  and  coming  fast,  when  the  birth  of  children  will  be  a  matter  of 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  WOMEN  343 

occupations  will  produce  female  blacklegs  and  gravely 
agitate  the  trade  unions,  already  torn  between  the  alterna- 
tive of  admitting  women,  with  "equal  pay  for  equal  work," 
or  seeing  themselves  undercut  by  cheaper  but  not  always 
less  efficient — and  sometimes  even  more  efficient — female 
labor.1 

The  servant  problem  will  be  aggravated;  the  girls  who 
have  tasted  the  higher  wages  and  urban  freedom  of  the 
munition  factories  will  not  lightly  return  to  domestic  ser- 
vice, especially  in  the  country  house. 

There  will  be  friction  all  along  the  line  at  those  points 
which  women  have  not  yet  stormed — and  these  embrace 
in  England  the  whole  of  the  legal  profession,  the  higher 
walks  of  the  Civil  Service  and  even  of  medicine,  not  to 
mention  Parliament  and  Government.  The  end  of  the 
war  will  bring  not  peace  but  sex  strife  added  to  the  inevi- 
table economic  discontents.  For  the  social  landscape  can- 
not be  transformed  for  women  without  changing  man's 
situation  too.  When  the  valleys  are  exalted,  the  hills  are 
apt  to  subside.  By  an  odd  coincidence  the  female  chapter 
of  the  Times'  History  of  the  War  winds  up  with  a  picture 
of  "A  Woman  Making  a  Doll's  House."  That  was,  it 
appears,  and  not  only  from  Ibsen,  an  exclusively  male 
occupation.  What  sinister  symbolism  lurks  in  this  climax? 
Is  the  man  to  be  henceforward  the  pampered  puppet? 

vital  necessity  to  the  nation.  Let  us  therefore  have  no  canting  talk  about 
'  morality.' "  JOHN  B ULL. 

1  Owing  to  the  attitude  of  the  Dockers'  Union  all  the  women  employed  at 
the  Liverpool  Docks  had  to  be  sent  away. 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT! 

(Speech  to  the  United  Suffragists  at  Kingsway  Hall,  February  25,  1915.) 

"We  thought  her  dying  when  she  slept, 
And  sleeping  when  she  died." — HOOD. 

The  Resolution  that  I  have  the  privilege  to  move  runs  as 
follows: — 

"That  this  meeting  is  profoundly  convinced  that  the  basis 
of  peace  at  the  end  of  the  present  war,  in  common  with  all 
other  international  and  domestic  affairs,  cannot  be  satisfac- 
torily settled  while  women  are  excluded  from  the  rights  of 
citizenship;  and  accordingly  it  demands  that  the  Government 
take  advantage  of  the  present  party  truce  to  carry  into  law  a 
non-party  measure  for  women's  enfranchisement." 

But  I  confess  I  feel  somewhat  embarrassed  at  having  to 
raise  the  question  of  votes  for  women  at  this  juncture.  In- 
stead of  condoling  with  women  upon  their  lack  of  votes  I 
feel  more  like  congratulating  them  upon  it.  For  upon  us 
who  have  votes — be  we  English  or  German,  French  or 
Austrian — lies  at  least  some  part  of  the  responsibility  for 
the  most  terrible  war  in  history,  the  gigantic  misery  and 
waste  of  which  not  even  all  the  heroism  and  self-sacrifice 
it  has  called  forth  can  redeem,  nor  all  the  splendors  and 
profits  of  victory  wipe  out.  It  is  with  the  consent  and  con- 
nivance of  us  men  that  millions  of  educated  Europeans  are 
at  this  moment  burrowing  underground,  side  by  side  with 
Asiatics  and  Africans,  in  some  instances  recent  converts 
from  cannibalism,1  and  that  the  era  which  prated  of  the 

1 A  picture  in  the  Observer  of  November  29,  1914,  shows  us  our  "Fijian 

344 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!.  345 

Superman  has  produced  the  Super-Rabbit.1  It  is  with  our 
consent  and  connivance  that  colossal  sums  which  might  have 
renewed  the  whole  social  fabric  of  Europe  are  squandered 
at  an  appalling  speed  in  shells  and  bombs  which  in  their 
turn  destroy  yet  more  of  the  slowly-garnered  products  of 
labor.  It  is  with  our  consent  and  connivance  that  the  no- 
blest and  strongest  of  our  sex  are  being  eliminated  or  muti- 
lated, and  that  instead  of  the  survival,  we  have  the  funeral 
of  the  fittest.  It  is  with  our  consent  and  connivance  that 
half  the  human  race  is  at  war  and  the  other  half  caught  in 
the  currents  of  ruin,  while  the  wail  of  broken  bodies  goes 
up  from  three  Continents.  It  is  with  our  consent  and  con- 
nivance that  a  colossal  world-industry  has  been  set  up,  the 
object  of  which  is  to  produce  dead  people,  an  industry, 
the  capital  sunk  in  which  is  so  vast,  and  the  plant  of  which 
is  so  extensive,  embracing  as  it  does  aerial  and  submarine 
machinery  as  well  as  surface  plant,  that  it  costs  some  two 
hundred  pounds  to  turn  out  a  single  corpse.2  I  do  not  say 
this  output  of  carrion  is  quite  useless:  it  serves  to  manure 
the  fields  of  Europe  and  even  to  produce  fruits  more  or  less 
valuable  in  the  spiritual  and  political  spheres.  Nor  do  I 
say  that  England  could  easily  have  avoided  going  into  the 
business — or  could  at  this  moment  cease  manufacturing 
corpses,  or  allow  them  to  be  made  exclusively  by  Germans 
established  in  Belgium  and  France.3  All  I  desire  to  point 

Warriors,"  described  as  "formerly  cannibals  but  now  mostly  Wesleyan 
Methodists!" 

1  Dr.  Max  Dressoir,  Professor  of  Psychology  at  the  University  of  Berlin, 
after  a  study  of  life  in  the  trenches,  reports  that  its  characteristics  are 
"animalistic." 

2  A  French  artillery  officer  has  calculated  it  takes  three  tons  of  metal  to 
kill  a  single  soldier.    But  to  this  must  be  added  the  cost  of  the  cannon  and 
the  upkeep  and  travelling  expenses  of  the  Killers. 

3  It  is  curious  that  humanity  can  bear  to  do  what  it  cannot  bear  to  say. 
This  simple  facing  of  the  facts  gave  pain  to  a  mother  who  wrote  to  the  Pall 
Mall  Gazette.    Of  course  my  words  were  deliberately  chosen  to  convey  to 


346  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

out  is  that  we  have  now  before  us  the  results  of  the  male 
direction  of  the  planet.  It  is  open  to  argument  whether 
women  or  women  with  men,  would  have  done  better:  it  is 
beyond  question  that  they  could  not  possibly  have  done 
worse.  And  since  what  cannot  possibly  be  done  worse 
stands  a  very  large  chance  of  being  done  better,  common 
sense  combines  with  every  dictate  of  reason  and  justice 
to  demand  that  in  the  business  of  running  the  State  women 
should  now  have  an  equal  hand. 

And  though  from  one  point  of  view  their  freedom  from 
our  blood-guilt  is  enviable,  it  is  not  fair  either  to  them  or  to 
us  that  they  should  have  no  share  in  the  responsibility  for 
the  Titanic  tragedy  which  they  are  now  asked  to  endure, 
alleviate  and  pay  for.  Granted  even  that  woman's  place  is 
the  home,  the  waves  of  war  do  not  draw  back  at  her  door- 
step. Foreign  Policy  stands  in  no  sharp  separation  from 
Domestic  Economy.  Politics  is  no  strange  monastic  region 
remote  from  female  interests.  Bombs  and  shells  do  not 
avoid  the  home  because  it  is  woman's  place.  Precisely  upon 
the  home  beat  the  questions  of  food-prices  and  coal-prices, 
child-labor  and  war-pensions.  And  all  these  questions, 
like  the  workings  of  military  law  upon  her  sex,  find  woman 
without  even  the  protection  of  the  vote.  But  to-day,  even 
for  the  rabidest  anti-suffragist,  the  home  is  not  woman's 
exclusive  place — she  is  indispensable  in  the  firing  zone, 
in  the  khaki  factories,  in  the  hospitals;  and  England,  which 

others  my  horror  of  this  international  insanity  so  that  they  might  end  it  as 
soon  as  honor  permits,  and  base  their  future  idea  of  honor  on  avoiding  its 
repetition.  At  the  cost  of  hurting  this  "Mother's"  feelings  I  might  save 
many  other  mothers  their  sons.  I  should  not  have  thought  it  an  unpleasant 
suggestion  that  the  dead  fructify  the  fields,  indeed  I  was  pleased  to  note  from 
a  War  Correspondent's  report  that  in  one  place  this  was  actually  happening. 
That  the  spirit  may  be  having  separate  adventures  is  irrelevant.  To  suppose 
that  this  tragic  butchery  could  be  circumvented  by  immortality  would  be 
to  deprive  death  of  its  reality,  heroism  of  its  substance  and  war-makers  of 
their  guilt. 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!  347 

so  bitterly  opposed  her  entrance  into  the  medical  schools, 
is  now  thanking  God  that  so  many  female  doctors  are  avail- 
able and  is  crying  for  more.  Not  a  few  eminent  men  have 
gone  out  to  America  to  champion  the  cause  of  the  Allies  and 
of  British  freedom.  I  know  none  who  has  done  it  more 
vigorously  or  effectively  than  Christabel  Pankhurst,  who 
said  in  New  York:  "You  would  not  have  thought  much  of 
us  suffragettes,  of  our  intelligence,  our  patriotism,  our  love 
of  freedom,  if  we  had  let  militarism,  the  Kaiser  and  all  his 
tribe,  use  us  in  this  task  of  breaking  down  the  world's 
stronghold  of  liberty — use  us  to  help  destroy  the  mother 
of  Parliaments.  No.  No.  That  shall  never  be/'  One 
would  have  thought  that  if  only  in  graceful  acknowledg- 
ment, the  mother  of  Parliaments  would  now  remember  the 
daughters  of  England.  Are  they,  who  have  so  nobly  and 
uncomplainingly  taken  their  place  in  every  department  of 
the  national  life  in  order  to  help  wage  this  war  which  was 
thrust  upon  them,  to  have  no  voice  in  the  Peace-Settlement 
either? 

But  even  as  I  ask  this  question,  I  am  conscious  of  a  mock- 
ing sprite  that  answers  it  by  another.  "What  voice  are 
you  men  going  to  have  in  the  Peace-Settlement?"  I  am 
here  to  cry  "Votes  for  women. "  Ought  I  not  rather  to  be 
crying  "Votes  for  men?"  For  our  vaunted  male  vote  is 
powerless  in  foreign  affairs — which,  as  we  have  just  seen,  are 
really  domestic  affairs  by  a  roundabout  route.  We  men  are 
humored  like  little  children  with  a  nursery  vote,  but  when 
it  comes  to  adult  business,  to  questions  of  life  and  death, 
to  things  that  change  life  for  generations,  we  are  as  helpless 
as  babes  or  females.  The  Government  conceals  from  us— 
even  from  some  of  its  own  colleagues 1 — the  engagements 
that  commit  us  to  war.  Our  responsibility  for  this  cosmic 

1  Burke  speaks  of  the  device  of  the  "double  Cabinet,"  and  Bright  com- 
plained that  wars  were  decided  by  only  two  or  three  men. 


348  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

fury  is  not,  therefore,  so  heavy  as  it  seems:  it  is  not  an  im- 
mediate responsibility,  but  it  lies  in  our  not  having  de- 
mocratized our  Government  in  the  past,  and  it  will  lie  upon 
us  in  the  future  if  we  do  not  now  set  to  work  to  make — in  the 
language  of  Mr.  Asquith — "the  will  of  the  people  prevail." 

As  you  are  perhaps  aware  a  Union  of  Democratic  Control 
has  just  been  founded,  on  whose  Council  I  have  the  honor 
to  be,  and  since  this  Union  is  already  spreading  its  roots  far 
and  wide  in  London  and  the  provinces,  Mr.  Brailsford  and 
myself  thought  it  desirable  it  should  define  its  position 
towards  suffrage  before  it  spread  any  further.  For  we 
know  the  strength  and  prevalence  of  the  delusion  that  the 
will  of  the  people  is  the  will  of  half  the  people,  that  Democ- 
racy is  a  matter  of  trousers,  and  that  the  voice  of  the  people 
is  the  voice  of  man.  The  Union  was  more  than  willing  to 
put  itself  on  record  as  free  from  this  favorite  fallacy,  and  at 
its  second  meeting  the  other  day  passed  a  resolution  de- 
claring that  "the  Union  of  Democratic  Control,  convinced 
that  democracy  must  be  based  on  the  equal  citizenship  of 
men  and  women,  invites  the  co-operation  of  women." 
It  further  recognized  the  convergence  of  the  two  lines  of 
work  by  the  election  of  a  prominent  woman  suffragist  on 
the  executive  committee. 

It  is  true  that  of  the  four  cardinal  points  of  the  Union's 
programme,  the  fourth,  calling  upon  Great  Britain  to  pro- 
pose an  all-round  reduction  of  armaments  as  part  of  the 
Peace-Settlement,  has  no  special  importance  for  women, 
except  in  their  role  of  housekeepers,  &kt  *a,s  regards  the  first 
point  of  the  Union's  programme  it  is  peculiarly  necessary 
to  guard  against  women  being  overlooked.  For  this  article 
demands  that  no  Province  shall  be  transferred  from  one 
Government  to  another  without  the  consent,  by  plebiscite 
or  otherwise,  of  the  population  of  such  province.  And  the 
tendency  to  forget  that  the  population  includes  women  is 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!  349 

more  marked  when  men  are  making  politics  than  when  they 
are  making  love.  The  second  point,  aiming  to  remove 
Foreign  Policy  from  the  sphere  of  secret  diplomacy  to  the 
control  of  Parliament,  means  an  enrichment  of  the  vote 
which  will  make  women's  struggle  for  it  infinitely  more 
worth  while.  And  the  remaining  point  which  seeks  to  re- 
place the  bankrupt  policy  of  "The  Balance  of  Power" 
by  the  establishment  of  an  International  Council,  and 
thus  foreshadows  what  Tennyson  called  "the  Parliament 
of  Man/'  is  a  warning  to  women  to  be  on  their  guard  as 
to  the  interpretation  of  this  poetic  phrase.1 

But  my  embarrassment  in  proposing  the  resolution  I 
have  to  move  springs  not  only  from  the  fact  that  even  the 
male  population  has  no  voice  in  the  Peace-Settlement.  The 
resolution  asks  for  Parliament  to  pass  Women's  Suffrage 
but  there  is  practically  no  Parliament  in  which  to  pass  it. 
The  papers  exultingly  tell  us  that  Germany  is  on  short 
commons.  But  it  is  England  which  is  on  short  commons. 
There  are  at  Westminster  no  bells  and  no  bills,  no  divisions 
and  no  debates,  or  none  that  are  not  talked  out;  there  are 
numerous  by-elections  but  no  ballots.  On  such  short  com- 
mons are  we  that  two  hundred  M.  P.'s  have  gone  to  the 
front.  All  honor  to  them — but  the  front  is  no  place  for  a 
Member  of  Parliament.  The  place  of  a  Member  of  Parlia- 
ment is  in  Westminster — it  is  what  we  pay  him  for — and 
if  he  cannot  be  in  Westminster  he  must  resign.  Or  at  least 
he  must  give  place  to  a  locum  tenens,  the  constituency 
agreeing  to  keep  his  place  open  for  him.  As  a  result  of 
this  slackness  of  the  People's  House  we  have  witnessed 
the  amazing  spectacle  of  the  House  of  Lords  meeting 
in  its  absence  to  pick  up  the  fragments  into  which  the 
Commons  had  torn  Magna  Charta.  I  always  predicted  that 

1  The  U.  D.  C.  has  since  added  a  fifth  point,  repudiating  economic  war 
after  the  conclusion  of  Peace. 


350  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

Mr.  Asquith  would  tame  neither  the  Lords  nor  the  Ladies, 
but  such  a  topsy-turvy  situation  leaves  the  most  ironic 
imagination  gasping.  It  would  not  surprise  me  now  to 
see  the  Lords  forcing  Female  Suffrage  upon  a  kicking 
Radical  Cabinet.  But  whether  forced  by  the  Lords  or 
forced  by  the  Ladies,  forced  it  must  be.  The  notion  that 
this  is  a  dead  season  in  politics,  that  two  hundred  members 
may  go  off  to  the  war,  and  that  those  who  do  not  serve 
their  country  in  the  trenches  ought  to  neglect  it  on  the 
benches,  is  a  notion  that  cannot  bear  a  moment's  criticism. 
I  quite  agree,  of  course,  that  in  a  time  of  national  danger 
all  parties  should  stand  together.  But  they  should  stand 
together  only  against  the  external  danger,  not  against  the 
internal  progress  of  their  own  country.  I  admit,  too,  that 
on  the  heads  of  the  Ministers  lie  terrific  burdens  and  terrific 
responsibilities,  largely  indeed  due  to  their  own  failure  to 
provide  for  the  contingencies  they  secretly  risked,  but  none 
the  less  terrific.  But  if  the  heads  of  departments  may  thus 
be  excused  from  attending  to  anything  but  the  war,  all  the 
more  reason  why  the  other  six  hundred  should  get  busy 
about  something  else.  An  easy  division  of  labor  would 
leave  the  war  to  the  Cabinet  and  social  legislation  to  the 
Commons.  To  divert  at  such  a  moment  a  single  foot- 
pound of  energy  from  the  struggle  against  Germany  would 
be  almost  treason.  But  for  those  who  cannot  bring  energy 
to  bear  upon  the  struggle,  to  be  overwhelmed  by  the 
burden  of  other  people's  activities  is  not  patriotism 
but  paralysis.  I  wish  the  House  would  take  example 
by  my  French  nursery  governess,  who,  cut  off  from  her 
family  in  the  danger  area,  and  from  her  father  in  the 
trenches,  and  without  in  these  latter  days  any  news 
from  either,  calmly  continues  her  routine  of  duty.  There 
should  now  reign  in  the  House  of  Commons  not  stag- 
nation but  the  very  heyday  of  legislation.  The  idea 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!  351 

that  now  we  should  eat,  breathe,  sleep  nothing  but  war 
would  be  intelligible  if  instead  of  being  a  great  nation  we 
were  a  nomadic  tribe  of  scalp-hunters,  or  even  if  the  war 
were  to  be  a  mere  brief  interruption  of  our  civilized  routine, 
a  spasm  of  intensity,  an  affair  of  three  months.  But  ac- 
cording to  Lord  Kitchener  it  is  to  last  three  years — and 
even  then  there  is  no  telling.  We  know  that  history  has 
had  its  Seven  Years'  war,  its  Thirty  Years'  war,  and  even 
longer  wars.  Are  we  during  this  indefinable  interval  to 
cease  to  exist  as  a  civilization?  Our  M.  P.'s  in  the  rabbit- 
warrens  are  at  least  nobly  active:  are  our  M.  P.'s  at  home 
to  become  rabbits  in  hutches — lettuce  eaters  in  a  lettuce- 
land?  1  Surely  this  is  no  necessary  consequence  of  the  state 
of  war.  If  we  are  to  live  in  a  state  of  war,  we  must  adjust 
ourselves  to  this  new  condition  as  we  adjusted  ourselves 
to  the  dangerous  bicycle,  to  the  menacing  motor-car,  as 
we  have  adjusted  ourselves  to  the  dark  streets.  In  still 
darker  ages,  war  was  a  permanent  condition  of  life.  Yet 
the  great  international  universities  taught,  the  great 
cathedrals  rose,  the  great  tapestries  were  spun,  and  the 
great  pictures  painted.  Even  with  us  plays  still  run,  pic- 
ture-plays still  gallop,  law-courts  still  sit,  the  Universities 
still  teach  despite  the  unbalanced  patriotism  of  absentee 
tutors,  galleries  are  still  open,  and  novels  still  pour  from 
the  presses.  "Business  as  usual,"  is  the  motto  everywhere 
— even  with  our  brave  merchantmen;  everywhere  except 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  where,  as  in  a  sacred  hush,  men 
shut  their  eyes  and  open  their  ears  to  receive  the  ukases 

1  See  Our  Parliamentary  Loafers,  by  T.  P.  O'Connor,  M.  P.,  an  article  in 
the  Daily  Chronicle  (March  7,  1916)  in  which  he  reports  an  M.  P.  as  saying: 
"I  have  been  chairman  for  many  years  of  my  county  council;  I  am  also  the 
head  of  the  education  authority;  I  have  given  years  of  my  life  to  the  mastery 
of  these  local  questions,  and  especially  of  the  education  question;  all  this 
experience  and  all  my  service  are  at  the  disposal  of  the  House  of  Commons 
and  of  the  Government;  and  yet  I  am  doing  nothing." 


352  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

of  the  Cabinet.  In  the  language  of  the  Times  the  House 
of  Commons  is  now  at  last  "  business-like."  To  be  business- 
like is  to  have  no  party-quarrels,  but  also  to  do  no  business, 
to  close  even  before  the  other  public  houses.  But  let  me 
tell  the  members  that  England  expects  the  House  to  do  its 
duty.  Even  the  Stock  Exchange  could  not  be  kept  per- 
manently closed,  nor  can  we  afford  to  spike  our  legislative 
machine  at  the  very  moment  when  it  could  be  most  pro- 
ductive. 

Last  year  Mr.  Galsworthy  made  a  burning  appeal  for  a 
number  of  legislative  reforms  which  though  favored  by  the 
vast  majority  of  civilized  beings,  and  tending  to  eliminate 
a  vast  volume  of  preventable  suffering,  could  never  be 
got  through  the  House  for  lack  of  time.  The  House,  busy 
with  Welsh  sects  and  Irish  factions,  had  never  a  day  off 
for  the  questions  of  sweating,  and  unhealthy  housing  and 
child-feeding;  for  the  protection  of  song-birds  or  the  rights 
of  animals.  Surely  now,  if  ever,  is  the  time  to  clear  up  all 
these  arrears,  to  set  the  crooked  straight,  to  redress  the 
wrongs  of  the  lower  creatures  and  even  of  women.  But 
I  suppose  to  our  panic-stricken  Parliament  the  mere  sug- 
gestion that  it  should  perform  the  functions  for  which 
we  pay  it  will  seem  heretical.  And  to  the  world  at  large 
our  resolution  that  the  House  should  now  proceed  to  give 
votes  to  women  will  seem  positively  pro- German.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  not  giving  votes  to  women,  that  is  pro-German. 
There  is  nothing  more  characteristically  and  pertinaciously 
Prussian.  One  would  have  thought  that  in  view  of  our 
perpetual  preachment  against  the  German  doctrine  that 
Might  is  Right,  we  would  jump  at  the  opportunity  to 
enfranchise  the  weaker  sex,  and  to  build  the  fabric  of  State, 
not  on  brute  force  but  on  reason  and  justice.  Our  war 
against  the  Germans,  we  say,  is  to  prove  that  this  principle 
of  theirs  is  wrong.  How  much  more  logical  to  prove  it  to 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!  353 

them  by  our  example  than  by  our  artillery!  And  this  is  a 
war,  we  say,  on  behalf  of  oppressed  nationalities  and  popula- 
tions, a  war  for  human  freedom.  Are  the  rights  of  English- 
women less  than  the  rights  of  semi-savage  Bulgarians  or 
Serbians?  The  exclusively  Male  State  was  always  an  un- 
natural monster,  and  if  this  is  really  a  war  to  end  Mili- 
tarism, as  we  hear  on  every  hand,  it  must  be  a  war  to  end 
the  Male  State.  For  what  is  Militarism  but  the  expression 
of  the  Male  State,  the  mark  of  the  beast?  It  is  to  the  Male 
State  in  excelsis,  to  Germany,  that  we  owe  all  this  incal- 
culable misery.  I  was  looking  the  other  day  at  an  old 
English  book  published  in  1633  called  The  Pleasure  of 
Princes,  or  Good  Men's  Recreations.  It  wound  up  with  a 
section  on  cock-fighting.  In  Prussia  the  pleasure  of  princes 
is  man-fighting,  and  war  is  not  only  a  good  man's  recrea- 
tion, it  is  the  very  soul  of  his  goodness,  without  which  he 
were  a  wicked  waster  and  weakling. 

It  has  been  urged  that  women  are  just  as  martial  as  men, 
that  when  Carlyle  said  the  population  of  England  was 
thirty  millions,  mostly  fools,  this  concept  of  the  State  did 
for  once,  not  forget  its  female  half,  and  that  therefore  the 
duplication  of  the  vote  would  only  duplicate  the  number  of 
enfranchised  fools.  The  answer  is  that  it  may  duplicate 
the  fools  and  fire-eaters  but  it  will  duplicate  also  the  num- 
ber of  brave  and  wise  spirits  with  the  status  and  prestige 
of  voters.  And  in  politics,  despite  the  apparent  counting 
of  heads,  it  is  the  minority  that  tells  in  the  long  run,  the 
minority  that  cares  and  labors  and  sacrifices.  This  inten- 
sive minority  it  is  that  stands  to  gain  from  Women's  Suf- 
frage. The  male  fighters  for  justice  and  freedom  will  find 
their  numbers  doubled,  and  their  courage  quadrupled. 
Give  women  votes  and  you  will  soon  find  the  concepts  of 
the  Male  State  undergoing  considerable  and  salutary 
transformation. 


354  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

In  pressing  for  this  reform  during  this  very  season,  in 
demanding  that  the  Government  take  advantage  of  the 
present  party  truce  to  call  into  law  a  non-party  measure 
for  women's  enfranchisement,  neither  you  nor  I  have  the 
faintest  intention  or  desire  to  worry  or  embarrass  the 
Government.  On  the  contrary,  we  would  gladly  excuse  Mr. 
Asquith  from  attendance.  Six  hundred  able-bodied  men — 
or  even  four  hundred — are  quite  competent  to  do  the  job 
without  the  assistance  of  a  single  Minister  or  bureaucrat. 
Has  it  not  frequently  been  admitted  that  they  are — the 
majority  of  our  M.  P.'s — in  favor  of  Women's  Suffrage,  if 
only  " militancy"  would  cease?  Well  " militancy"  has 
ceased.  It  has  been  replaced  by  male  militancy,  militancy 
in  the  heavens  above  and  in  the  earth  beneath  and  in  the 
waters  under  the  earth,  militancy  of  so  appalling  a  sweep 
and  character  that  even  Lord  Curzon  and  Mrs.  Humphry 
Ward  must  look  back  with  a  sigh  to  the  good  old  days  of 
defaced  golf  greens  and  incinerated  villas.  And  not  only  has 
female  militancy  ceased — it  has  been  replaced  as  we  have 
seen,  by  female  service,  service  so  devoted,  so  multifarious, 
so  self-sacrificing  and  so  heroic  as  to  make  any  further 
denial  of  equal  footing  as  futile  as  it  would  be  ungrateful. 
Even  that  Arch-Priest  of  Anti-Suffrage,  the  Kaiser,  break- 
ing through  all  precedent,  has  conferred  the  Iron  Cross 
for  bravery  on  some  forty  female  nurses.  Everywhere, 
you  see,  the  distinction  between  the  sexes  is  being  reduced 
to  its  proper  sphere — which  is  with  few  exceptions  the 
sphere  of  privacy.  Sex's  place  is  the  home. 

But  I  shall  be  told  that  Women's  Suffrage  is  not  suitable 
for  the  present  truce,  that  it  is  a  party-question.  I  do  not 
admit,  as  I  have  said,  that  the  truce  should  extend  to  party- 
legislation  of  an  internal  character.  But  in  any  case  how 
can  that  be  a  party-question  which  each  of  the  great  parties 
has  refused  to  put  on  its  programme,  which  counts  avowed 


WAKE  UP,  PARLIAMENT!  355 

sympathizers  in  both  camps  and  which  Mr.  Asquith  has 
repeatedly  and  generously  admitted  is  handicapped  in 
the  House  by  not  being  a  party-question?  If  its  partisans 
now  evade  the  issue  on  the  plea  it  is  a  party-question,  they 
will  be  confessing  that  their  real  concern  is  not  for  the 
cause  but  for  what  their  party  can  get  out  of  it.  Gratitude 
has  been  denned  as  a  lively  sense  of  future  favors.  Is 
politics  only  a  lively  sense  of  future  votes?  Well,  we  shall 
see  if  the  politicians  will  admit  as  much. 

The  cause  of  Women's  Suffrage,  so  far  from  being  one 
that  may  or  should  be  shelved  at  this  moment,  is  one  of 
peculiar  importance  at  this  moment.  For  it  is  a  moment 
at  which  even  the  male  vote  has  been  reduced  to  impotence, 
at  which  Parliament  is  only  a  tied  House.  We  stand  under 
military  law  which  sweeps  away  for  very  questionable  rea- 
sons and  in  the  throes  of  panic  every  constitutional  safeguard 
built  up  by  the  wisdom  and  experience  of  generations  of  Eng- 
lishmen, including  free  speech,  an  uncensored  press,  and  trial 
by  jury.  England  has  agreed  not  to  end  the  war  without  the 
consent  of  either  France  or  Russia  and,  wise  or  unwise,  this 
world-shaking  decision  was  made  by  a  few  gentlemen  whose 
diplomacy  is  already  under  a  cloud.  We  have  also  agreed 
to  pool  our  resources  with  our  Allies,  and  this  new  epoch- 
making  arrangement  was  come  to,  not  in  the  House  of 
Commons,  not  in  London  at  all,  but  round  a  table  in  Paris. 
And  the  new  device  of  the  "  token  vote, "  the  blank  cheque 
given  by  Parliament  for  an  unstated  number  of  soldiers 
seems  to  remove  both  the  army  and  the  national  purse 
from  the  control  of  the  Commons.  No  wonder  the  Times 
exclaims  that  we  are  approaching  the  ideal  Parliament, 
that  Parliament  in  which  "none  are  for  a  party  and  all  are 
for  the  State."  They  are  not  for  the  State  so  much  as  for 
the  Staff — that  military  junta  which  is  always  so  soon 
ready  to  cry:  "L*6tat  c'est  moi."  Even  in  peace-times,  the 


356  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

military  note  dominates  in  our  State-processions  and 
parades  of  Empire.  In  vain  among  these  prancing  persons 
will  you  look  for  the  leaders  of  civilization.  How  poor  a 
figure  cuts  the  poet  beside  the  cavorting  colonel — the 
colonel  even  censors  the  poet's  plays.  It  is  the  perpetuation 
of  this  military  symbolism  and  prestige  that  makes  it  so 
easy  for  a  nation  to  slip  back  into  its  primeval  savagery, 
and  into  its  primeval  serfdom,  to  cast  off  its  parliamentary 
institutions  and  all  the  swaddling  safeguards  of  civilization 
when  the  tom-tom  calls  to  slaughter.  There  is  nothing 
so  near  the  skin  as  the  war-paint.  Victory  or  defeat  may 
equally  bring  us  this  wave  of  militarism,  of  conscription, 
of  further  reduction  of  liberty,  and  the  danger  is  the  greater 
because  we  are  under  a  Liberal  Government,  and  thus 
deprived  of  an  Opposition  to  criticize  reactionary  measures. 
Standing  as  we  do  under  this  sinister  menace,  it  is  pecu- 
liarly necessary  at  this  moment  that  the  concept  of  the 
Male  State  should  not  go  unchallenged  and  that  there 
should  be  a  vivid  and  effective  extension  of  the  area  of 
human  liberty  by  the  triumph  of  Female  Suffrage.  In 
pressing  now  for  votes  for  women  we  are  fighting  equally 
to  keep  our  votes  as  men.  The  cause  of  women  has  become 
the  cause  of  freedom  and  civilization  and  it  is  for  the  sake 
of  these  great  causes,  even  more  than  on  behalf  of  women, 
that  I  ask  you  to  pass  this  resolution. 


FOR  SMALL  MERCIES 

(DEDICATED  TO  "THE  NATION") 

Thinking  of  Poland  and  her  tortured  Jews, 
'Twixt  Goth  and  Cossack  hounded,  crucified 
On  either  frontier,  e'en  the  Pale  denied, 
Wand'ring  with  bloodied  staff  and  broken  shoes, 
Scarred  like  their  greatest  son  with  stripe  and  bruise, 
Though  thrice  a  hundred  thousand  fight  beside 
Their  Russian  brethren  and  are  glorified 
By  death  for  those  who  flout  them  and  abuse, 

I  suddenly  was  touched  to  thankful  tears. 

Not  that  one  wave  had  ebbed  of  all  this  woe, 

Not  that  one  heart  had  softened  in  "the  spheres,"  l 

One  touch  of  bureau-malice  to  fore-go, 

But  that  amid  blind  eyes,  dumb  mouths,  deaf  ears, 

One  voice  in  England  said  these  things  were  so. 

1  Only  permissible  form  of  Russian  reference  to  the  Tsar  and  his  Coun- 
sellors. 


357 


ROSY  RUSSIA 

"The  whole  scenery  was  exactly  disposed  to  captivate  those  good 
souls,  whose  credulous  morality  is  so  invaluable  a  treasure  to  crafty 
politicians."— BURKE. 


Gradually  the  great  land  which  gloomed  like  an  Erebus 
on  the  political  horizon  has  been  glimmering  as  under  the 
coming  of  dawn,  and  now  it  lies  before  us  with  the  beautiful 
mystic  rose-glow  of  snow-mountains,  or  some  port  of  Arabia 
Felix  at  sunrise.  Darkest  Russia — the  Russia  of  knouts 
and  exiles,  of  pogroms  and  agents  provocateurs,  of  cruel 
Cossacks  driving  chained  gangs  of  poetic  dreamers;  the 
Russia  of  bankrupt  finances,  and  bankrupt  hopes — has 
disappeared  as  by  a  wave  of  the  diplomatic  wand.  It  was 
never  more,  we  are  told,  than  a  literary  nightmare,  a  Russia 
of  the  novelists,  unreal  as  the  fabular  islands  on  the  mediae- 
val map.  Hardy  Scotch  explorers  have  penetrated  on  foot 
to  the  deepest  fastnesses  and  remotest  tundras  of  the  Real 
Russia.  They  have  scaled  its  frowning  peaks  and  found 
them  honeycombed  with  shrines.  These  processions  march- 
ing footsore  over  the  great  white  spaces — they  are  not 
convicts  but  pilgrims  following  the  gleam.  These  moujiks 
rolling  in  the  mud — they  are  not  drunk,  they  never  were 
drunk,  even  when  vodka  was  the  staff  of  life:  they  are 
mystics  meditating  the  brotherhood  of  man  and  the  father- 
hood of  the  Tsar.  One  sinister  element,  indeed,  does  exist 
in  this  sacrosanct  realm,  one  subtle  and  serpentine  race  in 
this  illiterate  and  ingenuous  Paradise — that  blasphemous 

358 


ROSY  RUSSIA  359 

tribe  which  through  nigh  twenty  centuries  of  whips  and 
scorpions  keeps  proclaiming  with  dogged  materialism  that 
God  is  merely  One.  And  even  this  viperous  brood  is 
warmed  and  suckled  at  the  Christian  breast  it  bites.  And 
these  careful  scientific  observations  are  corroborated  by 
Russian  statesmen,  returning  from  financial  week-ends  in 
London,  and  by  British  novelists  who  after  a  whole  fort- 
night in  Russia  have  not  come  across  a  single  pogrom. 

To  one  like  myself  brought  up  in  the  Jingo  faith,  all  this 
is  profoundly  disconcerting.  It  was  in  my  schooldays 
that  "  the  Great  Macdermott,"  elegant  crush-hat  in  hand, 
his  shirt-front  shining  and  bulging  like  a  great  white  flower 
of  patriotism,  bellowed  the  historic  song  from  which  Jin- 
goism took  its  name: 

"We  don't  want  to  fight  but  by  Jingo  if  we  do—"  With 
what  grim  gusto  we  proclaimed  in  chorus — to  the  clash 
of  beer-tankards — our  sonorous  determination  that  so  long 
as  Britons  to  themselves  keep  true, 

"The  Russians  shall  not  have  Constantino-o-o-ple!" 
But  it  was  not  Constantinople  that  was  Russia's  supreme 
objective  in  those  days.  That  was  India,  and  all  through 
my  schooldays  I  was  obsessed  by  a  vision  of  Russia  on  the 
pounce  for  it,  was  warned  by  my  teachers  to  be  on  my  guard 
against  Russian  wrigglings  meandering  steadfastly  for  the 
Himalayas.  How  grateful  we  schoolboys  felt  towards 
Afghanistan — so  obviously  erected  by  Providence  as  a 
"buffer-state."  No  wonder  we  saw  Russia  in  Indian  ink. 

And  now  all  my  boyish  apprehensions  and  patriotic 
choruses  have  proved  puerile  indeed,  a  sheer  waste  of  nerves 
and  larynx. 

At  a  banquet  to  Russian  Journalists  in  London,  a  famous 
Russian  War  Correspondent  calmly  observed  that  "of 
course  there  were  cranks  everywhere,  but  he  could  say  from 
his  seventy  years'  knowledge  of  Russian  life  that  the  people 


360  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

who  dreamt  about  the  Conquest  of  India  could  be  found  in 
Russia  only  in  a  mad-house."  Shades  of  my  schoolmasters! 
Manes  of  our  politicians !  Levity  seems  too  mild  a  word  for 
the  war-policy  of  your  generation!  The  very  Victorian 
hymn  of  Jingoism  could  not  now  be  sung  under  the  Defence 
of  the  Realm  Act,  and  the  Great  Macdermott  would  be 
clapped  into  jail.  Could  even  Tennyson's  Maud  pass 
uncensored,  if  anyone  quoted  the  line  about  the  Vengeance 
of  God  being  wreaked  on  a  giant-Tsar!  As  for  the  world- 
coveting  will  of  Peter  the  Great,  it  is  as  mythical,  says  our 
Russian,  as  the  Constitution  of  Otho  or  the  donation  of  Con- 
stantine.  Russia,  in  fact,  covets  no  British  territory,  her 
mission  is  to  spread  Cossack  Christendom  through  the 
East,  and  to  throw  the  protection  of  her  bureaucracy  over 
the  Slav  peoples  that  have  drifted  too  far  westward  from  her 
great  mother-wings.  But  though  she  covets  no  British 
territory,  even  Britain  would  gain  by  coming  within  her 
spiritual  and  political  orbit.  Have  not  British  writers 
spontaneously  testified  that  Russia's  novelists  open  up  for 
us  new  horizons  of  human  fraternity,  sound  new  notes  of 
pity,  reveal  new  perspectives  of  social  freedom? 

And  yet  it  is  so  difficult  to  shake  off  early  teachings. 
Schoolmasters  should  really  be  careful  to  traffic  only  in 
truth  absolute  and  eternal.  Here  am  I  still  remembering 
the  legends  of  the  imprisonings  and  censorings  of  those 
very  novelists,  still  singing  that  Britons  never,  never,  never, 
shall  be  Slavs.  An  unworthy  suggestion  even  comes  up  in 
my  mind  that  the  freedom  of  Russia  may  appeal  so  strongly 
to  the  British  novelist  because  he — poor  Pharisee-ridden 
wretch — cannot  be  improper  even  in  his  books,  whereas  a 
deputy  of  the  Duma  may  walk  about  Petrograd  with  his 
mistress.  A  plague  on  my  schoolmasters !  They  taught  me 
the  six  hundred  and  thirteen  precepts  of  the  Old  Testament, 
but  "love  Russia"  was  not  among  them,  and  even  the  New 


ROSY  RUSSIA  361 

Testament  only  tells  me  to  love  my  " enemies,"  and  my 
"enemies"  are  now  settled  for  me  by  military  law.  My 
parlor-maid — as  I  have  related — said  to  my  wife  the  day 
Armageddon  broke  out:  "The  Germans  are  on  our  side, 
aren't  they,  mum?"  On  being  corrected,  she  duly  pro- 
ceeded— despite  the  New  Testament — to  hate  the  Germans 
and  love  the  Russians.  Those  of  us  whose  emotions  are 
not  so  facile  are  being  bullied,  badgered  or  beguiled  to  go 
and  do  likewise.  But  "love  light  as  air"  refuses  to  be  bound 
to  a  logical  chain  whose  first  link  is  Serbia.  Nor  do  I  see 
why  love  is  required.  Alliances,  springing  from  common 
interests,  but  not  from  common  blood,  faith  or  political 
constitution,  must  remain  merely  military.  To  be  faithful 
to  our  obligations  is  all  that  is  necessary.  It  is  a  partnership, 
not  a  marriage  bond,  and  when  finances  are  pooled,  too, 
what  more  can  a  partner  ask?  Why,  most  Englishmen 
have  never  seen  a  Russian,  always  excepting  those  that  saw 
him  pass  in  his  myriads  through  England  on  that  famous 
journey  from  Archangel  to  Flanders.  Moreover,  with  our 
knowledge  of  the  transitory  and  mutable  character  of 
Alliances,  we  should  be  foolish  to  contract  them  with  emo- 
tions attached,  emotions  which  we  may  soon  have  to  unlearn 
or  even  to  exchange.  Possibly  the  real  design  of  these 
exhortations  to  "love  Russia"  is  upon  our  pockets.  But 
that  needs  no  press  conspiracy,  no  special  supplements. 
It  is  surely  sufficient  to  show  that,  though  Russia  is  prac- 
tically bankrupt,  it  is  only  for  lack  of  ready  money,  and 
that  her  potential  assets — in  the  hands  of  the  British  re- 
ceiver— are  incalculable.  Twirl  a  globe  and  see  how  this 
Colossus  bestrides  Europe  and  Asia,  the  greatest  continuous 
Empire  in  the  world  and  one  of  the  least  exploited.  One 
may  safely  lend  money  to  such  a  Power  or  sink  it  in  such  a 
Continent,  and  the  more  steadily  Russia  pays  the  interest 
and  the  dividends,  the  more  she  will  be  loved.  To  what  end, 


362  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

then,  these  labored  rhapsodies  on  Russia's  religious  genius? 
And  above  all,  why  glorify  Russia's  freedom  from  industrial- 
ism, when  the  effect,  if  not  the  object,  of  these  very  paeans 
is  to  open  her  up  to  British  company  promoters?  The 
moujik  is  admirable  indeed  when  sober — and  though  you 
cannot  make  men  sober  by  Act  of  Parliament,  it  appears 
that  you  can  by  Imperial  Ukase1 — but  the  days  of  the 
Socialistic  Mir  are  over,  and  it  is  not  the  Alliance  with 
Britain  that  is  going  to  keep  Russia  a  land  of  ancient  piety, 
fraternity,  and  pastoral  simplicity.  Nor  is  it  likely  that 
these  are  the  qualities  which  Britain  will  now  import  from 
Russia,  together  with  those  delectable  ballets,  novels  and 
symphonies,  and  still  more  delectable  debentures.  A  natural 
optimism  inclines  me  to  believe  that  the  Russians,  who — 
whatever  the  real  color  of  Russia — are  assuredly  a  great 
and  charming  people,  will  not  altogether  escape  the  con- 
tagion of  our  democratic  principles.  I  should  be  afraid 
that  we  in  turn  might  not  escape  the  infection  of  their  bu- 
reaucracy did  not  our  new  geographers  certify  that  Russian 
autocracy  is  only  a  more  efficient  and  concentrated  form  of 
freedom.  It  is  so  comforting  to  know  on  unimpeachable 
authority  that  Darkest  Russia,  not  Rosy  Russia,  is  the 
mirage  in  the  literary  heaven,  and  that  the  rubescence 
which  enchants  us  now  is  the  herald  of  a  new  day  and  not, 
as  we  foolishly  feared,  the  rosiness  of  blood. 

II 

It  is  the  military  necessity — which  proverbially  knows 
no  law — that  has  become  the  mother  of  all  this  unnecessary 
invention — and  it  is  in  deference,  I  suppose,  to  British 

1 A  writer  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly  (December,  1915),  said  that  after  the 
first  few  weeks  illicit  distilling  increased  largely,  and  that  injurious  con- 
coctions are  drunk  in  Russia,  containing  wood-alcohol,  varnish,  and  even 
eau-de-cologne. 


ROSY  RUSSIA  363 

Pharisaism  that  the  great  Russian  people — constituted 
as  it  is  of  forty-eight  races  and  a  dozen  creeds  and  embracing 
as  it  does  some  of  the  finest  modern  types  on  the  planet — 
is  presented  by  our  Scotch  sentimentalist  as  a  cast  com- 
munion of  saints  of  the  primitive  peasant  type. 

If  any  hint  of  the  true  heterogeneity  is  allowed  to  creep 
into  the  preposterous  picture,  it  is  by  way  of  the  Tartar, 
who  brings  odious  order  and  Philistine  prose  into  the  divine 
carelessness,  the  glad  camaraderie  of  the  true  Russian,  and 
of  whom  the  Russian  Jew  is  probably  only  a  long  lost 
brother,  converted  to  the  Hebrew  faith  in  the  dark  ages. 

It  is  no  longer  scratch  the  Russian  and  find  the  Tartar, 
but  scratch  the  Jew — whom,  indeed,  it  is  far  easier  and 
more  enjoyable  to  scratch. 

Britons  have  often  been  reproached  for  carrying  their 
island  with  them  on  their  travels — ccdum  non  animam 
mutant — but  the  island  has  always  produced  fantastic 
and  rhapsodical  travellers  who  go  to  the  other  extreme, 
and  thus  it  is  that  Stephen  Graham  has  found  his  soul  in 
Russia,  and  in  lieu  of  surveying  Russia  by  the  torchlight 
of  British  freedom,  he  brings  back  to  Britain  the  ghostly 
gleam  of  the  "Greek  Fire,"  with  which  the  miracle-monger- 
ing  priests  edify  the  Russian  pilgrims  in  Jerusalem. 

In  this  "dim  religious  light"  all  the  mediaeval  specters 
glimmer  and  gibber  again,  the  monstrous  blood-myth 
resurges  from  its  grave  in  Kiev,  and  England  herself  in 
that  mysterious  phosphorescence  shows  as  an  ugly  and 
unchristian  nation  that  has  sold  her  soul  to  the  devil  of 
industrial  development.  If  only  Holy  Russia  can  be  saved 
from  going  likewise  to  the  Jews — for,  of  course,  it  is  this 
Oriental  people  that  has  made  the  West  Occidental! 

When  John  Ruskin  preached  to  John  Bull  against  rail- 
ways and  factories,  Britain  was  consumed  with  laughter, 
but  to-day,  when  a  Scotchman  Ruskinizes  for  Russia,  he 


364  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

is  hailed  almost  as  a  European  redeemer.  Simplicity,  as 
Oscar  Wilde  said,  is  the  last  refuge  of  the  complex. 

So,  too,  " backwards"  is  the  last  cry  of  progress.  The 
latest  young  Englishman  prostrates  himself  before  ikons, 
and  English  schoolgirls  prattle  of  that  sweetly  pretty  piety 
of  the  moujik. 

And  shall  Russian  Jews,  ungraced  by  this  precious  faith, 
overflow  their  Pale  and  spread  all  over  Russia  to  batten 
and  fatten  upon  the  exploitation  of  her  resources  and  ruin 
the  Pastoral  Paradise  of  the  true-born  Russian?  Never 
while  Stephen  Graham  is  alive  to  save  the  country  of  his 
second  birth! 

It  all  reminds  one  irresistibly  of  Defoe's  "True-born 
Englishman:" 

"Scots  from  the  northern  frozen  banks  of  Tay 
With  packs  and  plods  came  whigging  all  away; 
Thick  as  the  locusts  which  in  Egypt  swarmed, 
With  pride  and  hungry  hopes  completely  armed; 
With  native  truth,  diseases  and  no  money, 
Plundered  our  Canaan  of  the  milk  and  honey. 
Here  they  grew  quickly  Lords  and  Gentlemen, 
And  all  their  race  are  True-Born  Englishmen." 

Our  Scotch  scribe  not  only  boasts  himself  a  "  true-born 
Englishman,"  but  he  has  become  a  "Real  Russian"  into 
the  bargain.  The  last  hope  of  the  "Black  Hundreds,"  he 
babbles  of  ritual  murders  to  make  Shylock's  pound  of  flesh 
creep,  and  has  assimilated  their  archaic  policy  of  segregat- 
ing the  Scots — I  mean  the  Jews — by  a  Roman  wall. 

I  could  almost  fancy  myself  listening  again  to  that  Rus- 
sian baroness  who,  brought  to  luncheon  at  my  house  one 
day  by  a  common  friend,  fell  to  expatiating  on  the  "terrible 
problem"  of  the  Jews  in  Russia.  A  sympathetic  soul, 
thought  I,  till  gradually  I  became  aware  that  the  "terrible 
problem"  was  not  for  the  Jews  but  for  the  Russians. 


ROSY   RUSSIA  365 

Once,  in  fact,  permit  these  terrible  Hebrews  to  escape 
from  their  Pale,  once  allow  them  the  educational  and  in- 
dustrial facilities  of  their  fellow-Russians,  and  hey  presto! 
they  are  the  rulers  of  Russia. 

It  is  only  when  one  looks  at  maps  and  figures  that  the 
complete  silliness  of  this  Slavinic  superstition  breaks  upon 
one.  The  Russian  Empire — even  without  the  territorial 
gains  the  war  may  bring  it — stretches  over  nearly  nine 
million  square  miles  and  occupies  one-sixth  of  the  land 
surface  of  the  globe.  Siberia  alone  is  more  than  a  million 
miles  larger  than  the  whole  of  Europe. 

And  this  Empire,  which,  like  the  United  States,  has  the 
supreme  advantage  of  continuousness,  is  inhabited  by 
nearly  a  hundred  and  eighty  million  people,  of  whom  only 
six  millions  are  Jews.  And  it  is  these  six  millions — one 
in  thirty  of  the  population — who,  given  a  free  field  and  no 
disfavor,  are  to  dominate  Russia,  the  tip  of  the  tail  wagging 
the  Bear!  It  is  a  great  compliment  to  the  Jews  but  it  is 
also  a  great  absurdity. 

Contemporary  politics  shows  us  numerous  examples  of 
races  kept  from  equal  rights  with  the  governing  race  on 
the  ground — or  pretext — of  intellectual  inferiority;  that 
is,  for  example,  the  justification  of  the  "white  man's  bur- 
den." But  I  hardly  recall  any  other  example  of  a  white 
people  crushed  down  by  another  white  people  on  the  ground 
of  its  admitted  superiority.  And  from  a  simple  geographical 
point  of  view  what  the  ruling  majority  claims  is  to  bar  one 
of  the  greatest  and  oldest  members  of  the  human  family 
from  access  to  nearly  a  sixth  of  the  globe.  And  this  insolent 
and  inhuman  claim  is  enforced  not  only  against  Russia's 
own  Jews,  but  against  subjects  of  her  Allies  like  myself. 
The  utter  unreason  of  this  claim  stands  out  more  vividly 
when  it  is  recalled  that  in  the  larger  half  of  this  prohibited 
area — in  Siberia — only  ten  millions  of  people  eke  out  a 


366  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

livelihood,  and  that  a  continent  half  as  large  again  as  the 
United  States  has  been  left  almost  in  primaeval  forest.  Is 
there  any  reason  why  the  Jews,  instead  of  being  cooped  up 
in  stinking  poverty  in  the  towns  of  the  Pale,  should  not 
be  invited  to  carve  out  a  province  with  the  ploughshare 
from  these  vast  neglected  territories? 

The  Russian  Jews  are,  according  to  Mr.  Graham  him- 
self, "a  great  people,"  even  "a  people  of  genius."  Physi- 
cally they  are  a  far  finer  type  than  the  Western  Jews; 
spiritually,  they  bubble  with  artistic  vitality  of  every  sort. 

And  while  the  majority  are  sunk  in  their  native  piety 
and  poverty,  that  feckless  faith  which  our  sentimental 
tramp  adores  when  it  is  tangled  up  with  trinities,  there  is 
an  industrial  and  commercial  minority  which  is  infinitely 
more  valuable  to  Russia  than  her  deposits  of  coal  or  petro- 
leum. 

If  Russia  proper  is  an  aggregation  of  analphabetic  peas- 
ants, all  the  more  reason  why  that  section  of  her  population 
which  possesses  an  ancient  tradition  of  culture  should 
gratify  its  passion  for  education. 

If  Russia  proper  is  inapt  for  industry  and  has  hitherto 
been  exploited  by  her  German  enemies,  is  not  that  the 
very  reason  why  she  should  now  be  developed  by  her  Jewish 
citizens,  why  she  should  yoke  their  financial  talents  to  the 
service  of  the  State? 

These  six  millions  of  Jews  are  here  body  and  soul.  They 
love  the  soil  which  they  have  inhabited  for  centuries,  in 
some  cases  longer  than  the  "  true-born  Russians." 

The  truest  Christians  in  Russia,  they  are  ready  to  for- 
give the  unspeakable  past.  They  ask  nothing  better  than 
to  live  and  die  for  "Mother  Russia,"  and  if  the  still  more 
ancient  "Mother  Zion"  has  been  invoked  these  latter  days, 
it  was  from  sheer  hopelessness  of  ever  being  treated  as 
children  of  Russia. 


ROSY  RUSSIA  367 

Was  there  ever  a  more  deplorable  example  of  muddled 
statescraft?  A  Tsar  who  throws  away  so  rich  a  tender  of 
love  and  service  is  no  "Little  Father:"  he  is  a  "Prodigal 
Son." 

Equal  rights  for  the  Jew — or  even  equal  wrongs  with 
the  Russian — would  indeed  bring  a  problem — but  for  the 
Jew:  the  problem  of  his  dissolution  in  the  melting-pot  of 
common  citizenship.  But  to  the  Russian  this  enfranchise- 
ment of  the  Jew  would  be  the  solution,  not  the  establish- 
ment, of  a  problem.  And  this  problem  was  never  more 
than  a  mirage,  a  Brocken  spectre,  a  phantasm  born  of 
ignorance  and  fear,  a  superfluous  addition  to  the  sorrows 
of  peoples  and  the  cares  of  kings.  I  know,  indeed,  no  more 
tragic  purblindness  in  history  than  that  Russia,  endowed 
with  a  human  asset  of  value  incalculable  and  incomparable, 
should  see  herself  burdened  instead  of  enriched. 

She  has  a  treasure  and  can  see  only  a  problem.  The 
pity  and  folly  of  it  all.1 

1  Since  this  article  was  written — and  refused  publication  by  Liberal  ed- 
itors— M.  Chukovsky,  one  of  the  leading  journalists  who  recently  visited  us, 
has  published  in  the  Russkoe  Slow,  an  article  very  much  in  this  vein,  and  the 
Petrograd  Correspondent  of  the  Times  has  sensibly  translated  it  for  the 
Literary  Supplement,  of  March  16,  1916.  He  wonders  whether  the  flood  of 
books  in  praise  of  Russia  will  not  submerge  London,  "  Glorious  Russia," 
"Friendly  Russia,"  "  Contemporary  Russia,"  etc.,  etc. 

"Mr.  Stephen  Graham  has  already  written  about  half-a-dozen  books  on 
Russia,  and  will  write  at  least  two  dozen  more  before  the  war  is  over.  Judg- 
ing by  his  photograph  he  loves  to  wear  a  Russian  shirt  and  bark  shoes.  His 
hair  is  cut  in  the  ultra-Russian  style.  Some  time  ago  he  travelled  with  our 
pilgrims  to  Jerusalem  to  pray  at  the  sacred  shrine,  and  ever  since  then  he  has 
held  forth  about  the  mystical  mission  of  Russia.  He  takes  himself  to  be  a 
disciple  of  Dostoievsky,  but  in  reality  he  is  a  smart  journalist  who  is  making 
the  best  of  a  fashionable  subject. 

"'Down  with  Virgil,  long  live  Pushkin!'  exclaims  one  of  our  admirers,  and 
prophesies  that  Oxford  students  will  soon  relinquish  the  one  to  take  up  the 
other.  'Livy  will  be  superseded  by  Karamzin;  Plato  by  Vladimir  Soloviev.' 
'The  Russian  language  will  take  the  place  of  Greek  and  Latin  in  all  schools 
in  Europe.'  '  War  and  Peace  is  the  greatest  novel  ever  written.'  ' The  future 


368  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

belongs  only  to  Russia,  not  to  France,  not  even  to  England.'  These  are 
samples  culled  from  the  same  source. 

"English  people  do  not  fully  realize  that  there  are  many  Russias,  not  one, 
and  that  sometimes  Mary  is  very  anxious  to  be  Martha.  Until  I  had  read  all 
these  books  I  had  no  idea  we  were  so  good.  Our  reflection  in  the  English 
looking-glass  makes  us  look  very  handsome.  It  appears  we  are  the  freest 
people  in  the  world.  Who  would  have  thought  it?  All  Europeans  have 
cause  for  envy,  it  seems.  I  learnt  this  to-day  from  Mr.  Garstin's  book." 

It  is  odd  in  this  connection  that  the  Russia  Society,  founded  at  the 
Speaker's  House  amid  universal  newspaper  applause,  to  foment  friendly 
relations  between  the  two  countries,  should  have  come  under  the  criticism  of 
the  Daily  Chronicle  for  its  lack  of  a  responsible  Committee  and  Treasurer,  and 
that  the  "Russian  Chamber  of  Commerce"  should  be  disavowed  both  by 
Russia  and  the  Foreign  Office. 


AT  THE  CONGRESS 

Six  hundred  gentlemen  in  Western  costume, 
A  tribune,  Presidents,  Vice-Presidents, 

Motions,  Amendments,  Votes,  a  mort  of  papers, 
Programmes  and  Budgets,  Parties,  Factions,  Groups, 

Leaders  and  sheep,  the  passionless  Reporters, 
White-hot  orations,  cheers  and  counter-cheers, 

Interruptions,  rulings,  points  of  order,  hisses, 
Invective,  passion,  personalities, 

Volcanic  jets,  vibrations,  scenes  in  the  Chamber, 
A  Jewish  Parliament! 

Alas!  this  solid-seeming  Hebrew  House  of  Commons, 

With  all  its  vivid  drama, 
For  want  of  one  thing  is  a  painted  show, 

A  filmy  phanto-mime,  a  picture  play. 

Is  it  because  it  stands  in  a  Christian  city? 

That  even  the  House  is  hired  for  a  week  from  the  heathen  ? 
And  in  alien  tongues  the  speakers  shout  for  Zion, 

Sans  common  speech  for  Mother  Zion's  children? 
These  are  mere  echoes  from  the  emptiness, 

But  not  its  heart. 
For  all  these  Parliaments,  Chambers,  Reichstags,  Dumas, 

With  their  Presidents  and  Premiers, 
In  their  broadcloth  and  fine  linen, 

And  their  Statesmen, 
Be  they  guardians  of  the  nation's  great  tradition, 

Or  seers  and  spinners  of  its  nobler  future, 
All  these  eloquent  expounders; 

In  these  fora  of  civilization, 
And  all  the  floors  they  take,  these  high-toned  speakers, 

All  the  polished  planks  beneath  their  spotless  shoes, 
Rest — and  without  them  were  but  scraps  of  paper — 

On  bayonets. 

369 


370  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

Bayonets  trained — see  the  Soldier's  Vade-mecum — 
To  twist  in  the  entrails. 

Yea,  hid  by  all  the  sober  civic  ritual, 
Unseen  beneath  the  Ministers  and  Members, 

A  glittering  forest  of  steel  upholds  the  Chamber, 
The  people's  bones  have  made  its  gleaming  pillars, 

The  frescoes  on  its  old  historic  walls 
Are  Blood. 

For  as  of  old  in  those  far-famous  cities 
Now  sunk  to  burrows  that  the  pick  explores 

Four  thousand  years  beneath  our  year  of  grace, 
They  built  their  houses  over  human  offerings, 

So  still  upon  foundation-sacrifices, 
Rises  the  Talking  House  in  Christendom. 

It  is  not  that  we  lack  these  dark  foundations, 
Our  bones  upprop  the  Parliaments  of  Europe, 

Our  young  men  die  but  not  for  dreams  of  ours, 
Nor  for  the  honor  of  the  God  of  Israel. 

And  even  those  who  dream  the  dream  of  Zion, 
Beglamored  by  the  shining  Tower  of  David, 

Like  birds  that  dash  themselves  against  a  lighthouse, 
Shattered  and  bleeding  drop  into  the  darkness. 

But  hark!  A  witty  speaker  holds  the  Congress! 

The  bored  reporters  scrawl  in  shorthand,  "Laughter!" 


THE  STORY  OF  THE  STEAM-ROLLER 


Not  to  be  published 
PRESS  BUREAU 


BEZALEL 

Bezalel,  filled  with  wisdom  to  design 

Stones,  precious  woods,  rich-broidered  fabrics,  gold, 

Fed  not  the  few  with  cunning  manifold 

Nor  empty  loveliness:  his  art  divine 

Set  up  a  Tabernacle  as  a  sign 

Of  oneness  for  a  rabble  many-souled, 

So  that  each  span  of  desert  should  behold 

A  nomad  people  with  a  steadfast  shrine. 

But  we,  its  sons,  who  wander  in  the  dark, 
Footsore,  far-scattered,  growing  less  and  less, 
What  whiteness  gleams  our  brotherhood  to  mark, 
What  promised  land  our  journey's  end  to  bless? 
We  are,  unless  we  build  some  shrine  and  ark, 
A  dying  rabble  in  a  wilderness. 


373 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS 

[Originally  published  July,  1915.    Slightly  revised,  but  the  fog  of 
war  and  censorship  prevents  absolute  accuracy  up  to  date.] 

Across  the  Eastern  sky  has  glowed 

The  flicker  of  a  blood-red  dawn. 
Once  more  the  clarion  cock  has  crowed, 

Once  more  the  sword  of  Christ  is  drawn. 
A  million  burning  rooftrees  light 
The  world-wide  path  of  Israel's  flight. 

Where  is  the  Hebrew's  fatherland? 

The  folk  of  Christ  is  sore  bested; 
The  Son  of  Man  is  bruised  and  banned, 

Nor  finds  whereon  to  lay  his  head. 
His  cup  is  gall,  his  meat  is  tears, 
His  passion  lasts  a  thousand  years. 

EMMA  LAZARUS. 


THE  HEBREW  HUMPTY  DUMPTY 

The  first  thing  to  grasp,  if  you  would  understand  the 
Jewish  question,  is  that  the  Jews  do  not  exist.  Six  hundred 
thousand  Jews  are  fighting  in  the  war,  but  not  the  Jews. 
Their  fighting  ended  in  the  year  133,  with  the  revolt  of  Bar 
Cochba  against  the  Romans.  Josephus's  History  of  the 
Jews  gets  as  far  as  the  year  73,  and  is  thus  still  almost  up- 
to-date.  The  Jewries  of  the  world  are  now  mere  scattered 
shards  of  a  broken  vessel,  though  the  potsherds  fill  more 
space  than  the  original  pot.  Two-and-two  no  longer  make 

374 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  375 

one,  they  only  make  four.  An  international  Jewry  with 
international  aims  is  a  myth.  "Israel's  mission  is  Peace" 
is  the  motto  printed  on  the  books  of  the  Jewish  Publication 
Society  of  America,  and  it  is  a  true  interpretation  of  the 
voice  of  Jerusalem.  But  Israel  is  no  more  organized  for 
peace  than  for  war.  Twenty  thousand  Jews  are  fighting 
for  the  British  Empire,  50,000  for  the  German,  170,000  for 
the  Austro-Hungarian,  and  350,000  for  the  Russian. 

The  shade  of  Josephus  might  have  looked  around  for  his 
stylus  in  1860,  when  the  French  Jews  founded  the  Alliance 
Israelite  Universelle  on  an  international  basis.  But  this 
attempt  at  federation  under  the  hegemony  of  French  Jewry 
was  shattered  by  the  Franco-Prussian  war.  Since  1870  it  is 
German  Jewry  that  has  been  pushing  for  predominance, 
with  or  without  a  democratic  basis.  Just  before  the  war  it 
was  waging  a  bitter  fight  for  the  adoption  of  German  as  the 
language  of  the  Technical  Institute  of  Haifa  (Syria).  Other 
of  the  founders,  as  well  as  the  Jews  of  Palestine,  not  un- 
naturally favored  Hebrew.  When  Turkey  joined  the  war 
the  Bismarcks  of  the  Berlin  Ghetto  took  advantage  of  their 
position  in  Palestine  to  buy  up  the  institution !  The  Zionist 
movement,  started  in  1896,  with  its  more  democratic  striv- 
ing for  a  unified  Israel,  likewise  fell  under  German  Jewish 
control.  But  at  the  outbreak  of  war  the  international 
organ  of  the  movement — Die  Welt — was  suspended  and 
the  German  Zionist  Federation  coolly  used  its  local  or- 
ganization for  the  gathering  of  German  volunteers.  To  its 
call  to  arms  for  the  Fatherland  its  numerous  student  and 
gymnastic  societies,  both  in  Berlin  and  the  provinces,  re- 
sponded almost  to  a  youth.1  Once  more  has  the  attempt  to 

1  Out  of  the  950  members  of  the  Zionist  Students'  Corporation  722  have 
borne  arms,  and  214  have  gained  distinctions,  a  remarkable  percentage, 
showing  brains  and  bravery  go  together.  According  to  an  article  in  the 
Vossische  Zeitung  by  Professor  Ludwig  Stein  there  have  been  286  Jewish 
Lieutenants. 


376  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

put  Humpty  Dumpty  together  again,  proved  a  labor  of 
Tantalus. 

II 

THE  WANDERING  JEW 

"There  is  no  luck  for  Israel/'  says  the  Talmud.  In- 
dividual Jews  are  frequently  shrewd  and  fortunate,  but  as  a 
people  Israel  is,  in  his  own  expressive  idiom,  a  Schlemihl,  a 
hapless  ne'er-do-well.  Twenty  centuries  of  wandering  find 
him  concentrated  precisely  in  the  plain  of  Armageddon. 
And  here  in  a  hundred  places  he  must  again  grasp  the  Wan- 
derer's staff.  Symbolic  is  the  figure  of  the  Chief  Rabbi  of 
Serbia  wandering  across  Europe  to  beg  for  his  pitiful  flock. 
A  workhouse  and  a  hostel  at  London  have  been  congested 
with  Belgian  Jews.  Forty  ravaged  towns  have  poured 
their  Ghettos  into  Warsaw:  Prague,  Vienna,  Budapest, 
seethe  sullenly  with  refugees.  Vienna,  indeed,  refused  to  re- 
ceive any  Galician  refugee  who  could  not  show  ten  pounds; 
Hungary  was  even  stonier.  A  census  taken  of  4,653 
Jews  who  fled  into  Alexandria  showed  subjects  of  England, 
France,  Russia,  Spain,  America,  Turkey,  Persia,  Rumania, 
Italy,  Greece  and  Serbia,  while  another  thousand  had 
already  wandered  farther — to  other  Egyptian  cities,  to 
America,  Australia,  South  Africa,  Russia.  Before  our  guns 
1,500  Jews  fled  from  the  Dardanelles.  The  only  important 
section  of  Jewry  that  has  escaped  the  war  is  that  which  has 
poured  itself  into  the  American  Melting  Pot  and  even  there 
the  banks  on  the  east  side  failed !  And  not  only  are  ten  of 
the  thirteen  millions  of  Jewry  in  the  European  cockpit, 
nearly  three  millions  are  at  the  fiercest  centre  of  fighting— 
in  Poland. 

Poland — be  it  German,  Russian,  or  Austrian  Poland — is 
pre-eminently  the  home  of  Jewry,  and  Poland,  even  mon 
than  Belgium,  has  been  the  heart  of  hell.  For  two  of  the 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  377 

Powers  that  combined  to  dismember  it  are  now  fighting 
the  third  across  its  fragments,  and  Jewish  populations  are 
at  their  thickest  along  those  six  hundred  miles  of  border 
country  through  which  Russia  invades  East  Prussian  Po- 
land or  Galician  Poland,  Germany  hacks  her  way  towards 
Warsaw,  or  Austria  hurls  her  counter-attacks. 

It  is  upon  the  Ghettos  of  Lomzha  and  Bialystok  that  the 
bombs  of  the  German  airmen  do  their  deadliest  work; 
Czernowitz,  the  capital  of  Bukowina,  which  has  been  twice 
taken  by  the  Russians,  and  re-taken  by  the  Austrians, 
holds  15,000  Jews,  or  forty  per  cent  of  the  mishmash  of 
races.  For  seven  hundred  years  Poland  has  been  a  haven 
for  Jewry — volcanic  though  the  soil  has  proved  at  periodic 
eruptions  of  Jew-hate.  The  royal  marriage  that  united  the 
territories  of  Catholic  Poland  with  Greek-Church  Lith- 
uania produced  a  sundering  of  State  and  religion  by  which 
the  Jews  of  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries  profited, 
while  in  the  sixteenth  century,  when  the  great  expulsion 
of  the  Jews  from  Spain  and  Portugal  had  infected  Germany 
and  France  with  the  virus  of  persecution,  the  accident  of  a 
series  of  peculiarly  wise  and  tolerant  monarchs  opened 
Poland  to  a  still  larger  volume  of  Jewish  immigration,  and 
even  gave  its  Jews  a  measure  of  autonomy  and  dignity. 
They  were  the  recognized  providers  of  an  urban  and  indus- 
trial population  to  a  mainly  agricultural  people.  Thus  were 
they  collected  for  the  holocaust  of  to-day.  For,  of  course, 
the  partition  of  Poland  left  them  still  pullulating,  whether 
in  Prussian  Danzig,  Russian  Warsaw,  or  Austrian  Lemberg. 
And  not  only  have  they  duplicated  the  tragedy  of  the 
Poles  in  having  to  fight  what  is  practically  a  civil  war,  not 
only  have  they  suffered  almost  equally  in  the  ruin  of  Poland, 
so  poignantly  described  by  Paderewski,  in  the  burnings, 
bombardings,  pillagings,  tramplings;  not  only  have  they 
shared  in  the  miseries  of  towns  taken  and  retaken  by  the 


378  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

rival  armies,  but  they  have  been  accused  hysterically  or 
craftily  before  both  belligerents,  of  espionage  or  treachery, 
and  even  of  poisoning  the  wells,  and  crucified  by  both. 
Hundreds  have  been  imprisoned  as  hostages,  shot,  knouted, 
hanged,  buried  alive;  women  have  been  outraged,  whole 
populations  have  fled,  some  before  the  enemy,  many 
hounded  out  by  their  own  military  authorities,  wandering — 
but  not  into  the  wide  world.  Into  the  towns  outside  the 
Pale  they  might  not  escape — these  were  not  open  even  to 
the  wounded  soldier.  In  the  long  history  of  the  martyr- 
people  there  is  no  ghastlier  chapter.  Yet  it  is  lost — and  nec- 
essarily lost — in  the  fathomless  ocean  of  Christian  suffering, 
in  the  great  world-tragedy.  But  while  Poland  and  Belgium 
are  crowned  by  their  sorrows  and  cheered  by  the  hope  of 
re-birth,  while  the  agony  of  Belgium  has  become  an  im- 
mortal heroic  memory,  the  agony  of  Israel  is  obscure  and 
unknown,  unlightened  by  sympathy,  unredeemed  by  any 
national  prospect,  happy  if  it  only  escapes  mockery.  It 
is  related  that  when  one  of  these  ejected  footsore  popu- 
lations, wandering  at  midnight  on  the  wintry  roads,  with 
their  weeping  young  children,  met  marching  regiments  of 
their  own  army,  the  women  stretched  out  their  hands  in 
frantic  beseechment  to  the  Jews  in  the  ranks.  But  the 
Jewish  soldiers  could  only  weep  like  the  children — and 
march  on. 

Ill 

To  THEIR  TENTS,  O  ISRAEL 

"You  are  the  only  people,"  said  Agrippa,  trying  to  hold 
back  the  Jews  of  Palestine  from  rising  against  the  Roman 
Empire,  "who  think  it  a  disgrace  to  be  servants  of  those  to 
whom  all  the  world  hath  submitted."  To-day,  servants  of 
all  who  have  harbored  them,  the  Jews  are  spending  them- 


THE   WAR  AND   THE  JEWS  379 

selves  passionately  in  the  service  of  all.  At  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  an  excited  Englishwoman,  hearing  that  the  Cologne 
Gazette,  said  to  be  run  by  Jews,  was  abusing  England,  wrote 
to  me,  foaming  at  the  quill,  demanding  that  the  Jews  should 
stop  the  paper.  That  the  Jews  do  not  exist,  or  that  an 
English  Jew  could  not  possibly  interfere  with  the  patriotic 
journalism  of  a  German  subject,  nay,  that  the  abuse  in  the 
Cologne  Gazette  was  actually  a  proof  of  Jewish  loyalty,  did 
not  occur  to  the  worthy  lady.  Yet  the  briefest  examination 
of  the  facts  would  have  shown  her  that  the  Jews  merely 
reflect  their  environment,  if  with  a  stronger  tinge  of  color 
due  to  their  more  vivid  temperament,  their  gratitude  and 
attachment  to  their  havens  and  fatherlands,  and  their 
anxiety  to  prove  themselves  more  patriotic  than  the  patriots. 
It  is  but  rarely  that  a  Jew  makes  the  faintest  criticism  of 
his  country  in  war-fever,  and  when  he  does  so  he  is  dis- 
avowed by  his  community  and  its  Press.  For  the  Jew  his 
country  can  do  no  wrong.  Wherever  we  turn,  therefore, 
we  find  the  Jew  prominently  patriotic.1  In  England  the 
late  Lord  Rothschild  presided  over  the  Red  Cross  Fund, 
and  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  is  understood  to  have  saved  the 
financial  situation  not  only  for  England,  but  for  all  her 
Allies.  In  Germany  Herr  Ballin,  the  Jew  who  refused  the 
baptismal  path  to  preferment,  the  creator  of  the  Mercantile 
Marine,  and  now  the  organizer  of  the  national  food  supply, 
stands  as  the  Kaiser's  friend,  interpreter  and  henchman; 
great  organizing  work  at  the  War  Office  has  also  been 
done  by  Herr  Rathenau,  while  Maximilian  Harden  brazenly 
voices  the  gospel  of  Prussianism,  and  Ernst  Lissauer — a 

^he  film-play  "Wake  Up,"  which  has  brought  30,000  recruits,  was 
written  by  a  British  Jew  and  boomed  by  a  popular  daily  with  a  Jewish  editor. 
Sergeant  Mick  Cohen,  of  the  4th  Batt.  Royal  Fusiliers,  has  recruited  some 
3,000  men  for  his  regiment  and  is  popularly  known  as  "The  King's  Re- 
cruiter." A  Liverpool  Minister  was  dismissed  for  favoring  the  conscientious 
objector,  and  the  Chief  Rabbi  decided  "Priests"  may  serve. 


380  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

Jew  converted  to  the  religion  of  Love — sings  "The  Song 
of  Hate."  In  France,  Dreyfus — a  more  Christian  Jew, 
albeit  unbaptized — has  charge  of  a  battery  to  the  north  of 
Paris,  while  General  Heymann,  Grand  Officer  of  the  Legion 
of  Honor,  commands  an  Army  Corps.  In  Turkey,  the 
racially  Jewish  Enver  Bey x  is  the  ruling  spirit,  having 
defeated  the  Jewish  Djavid  Bey,  who  was  for  alliance  with 
France,  while  Italy,  on  the  contrary,  has  joined  the  Allies 
through  the  influence  of  Baron  Sonnino,  the  son  of  a  Jew, 
with  the  co-operation  of  the  Republican  leader  Salvatore 
Barzillai,  now  a  member  of  the  Cabinet,  in  which,  too, 
Luzzeth  is  Finance  Minister.  The  military  hospitals  of 
Turkey  are  all  under  the  direction  of  the  Austrian  Jew, 
Hecker.  In  Hungary  it  is  the  Jews  who,  with  the  Magyars, 
are  the  brains  of  the  nation.  Belgium  has  sent  several 
thousand  Jews  to  the  colors,  and,  at  a  moment  when 
Belgium's  fate  hangs  upon  England,  has  entrusted  her 
interests  at  the  Court  of  St.  James  to  a  Jewish  Minister, 
Mr.  Hymans  and  their  Chief  Rabbi  has  persisted,  in  defiance 
of  the  Germans,  in  praying  every  Sabbath  in  Brussels  for 
King  Albert,  and  thus  bringing  upon  himself  six  months'  con- 
finement in  Germany.  Two  thousand  five  hundred  Jews  fight 
for  Serbia,  and  rather  more  for  Italy,  which  has  many  Jewish 
officers.  Even  from  Morocco  and  Tripoli  come  Jewish 
troops — they  number  20  to  30  per  cent  of  the  Zouaves.2 
Nor  are  the  British  Colonies  behind  the  French.  From 


1  Enver  Bey  belongs  to  the  Donmehs,  the  Jews  who,  in  the  mystic  year 
1666,  followed  "The Turkish  Messiah"  to  Islam.    See  my  "Dreamers  of  the 
Ghetto." 

2  The  Zouave,  Judah  ben  Barok,  has  received  two  war-medals.    Severely 
wounded,  he  rallied  the  other  men,  crying  "My  life  is  of  no  consequence. 
Vive  la  France!"    The  Algerian  Jewess,  Sarah  Zelish,  a  widow,  gave  up 
all  her  eight  sons  to  fight  for  France.    Per  contra,  a  widow  at  Budapest,  Rosa 
Tritz,  has  given  seven  sons  to  the  Hungarian   colors  and  Vera  Loeb  of 
Zweibrucken,  eight  sons  to  the  German. 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  381 

Australia,  New  Zealand,  from  Canada,  South  Africa,  from 
every  possession  and  dependency,  stream  Jewish  soldiers  or 
sailors.  Even  the  little  contingent  from  Rhodesia  had 
Jews,  and  the  first  British  soldier  to  fall  in  German  South- 
West  Africa  was  Ben  Rabinson,  a  famous  athlete.  In 
Buluwayo  half  a  company  of  reserves  is  composed  of  Jews, 
altogether  some  five  thousand  Jews  have  been  fighting  in 
South  Africa.  One  Spanish  Jewish  family  has  three  sons 
in  the  Belgian  army,  two  in  the  Canadian  force,  and  one  a 
Derby  volunteer.  Of  such  is  the  brotherhood  of  Israel. 
When  Joseph  Chamberlain  offered  the  Zionists  a  plateau 
in  East  Africa,  the  half-dozen  local  Britons  held  a  "mass- 
meeting"  of  protest.  Yet  to-day,  though  the  offer  was 
rejected  of  the  Zionists,  fifty  Jewish  volunteers — among 
them  Captain  Blumenthal,  of  the  Artillery,  and  Lieutenant 
Eckstein,  of  the  Mounted  Rifles — are  serving  in  the  Defence 
Force  enlisted  at  Nairobi.  Letters  from  British  Jews 
published  in  a  single  number  of  the  Jewish  World,  taken 
at  random,  reveal  the  writers  as  with  the  Australian  fight- 
ing force  in  Egypt,  with  the  Japanese  at  the  taking  of 
Tsingtau,  with  the  Grand  Fleet  in  the  North  Sea,  while 
the  killed  and  wounded  in  the  same  issue  range  over  almost 
every  British  regiment,  from  the  historic  Black  Watch, 
Grenadier  Guards,  or  King's  Own  Scottish  Borderers  down 
to  the  latest  Middlesex  and  Manchester  creations,  The 
old  world  and  the  new  are  indeed  at  clash  when  a  Jewish 
sailor  on  Passover  eve,  in  lieu  of  sitting  pillowed  at  the 
immemorial  ritual  meal,  is  at  his  big  gun,  "my  eye  fixed 
to  the  telescopic  lights  and  an  ear  in  very  close  proximity  to 
an  adjacent  navy-phone,  and  the  remainder  of  the  time 
with  my  head  on  a  projectile  for  a  pillow."  Anglo- Jewry, 
once  the  home  of  timorous  mothers  and  Philistine  fathers, 
has  become  a  Maccabaean  stronghold.  One  distinguished 
family  alone — the  Spielmanns — boasts  thirty-five  members 


382  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

with  the  forces.1  Another — the  Beddingtons — claims  thirty- 
nine.  A  letter  of  thanks  from  the  King  has  published  the 
fact  that  an  obscure  Jew  in  a  London  suburb  has  five  sons 
at  the  front.  In  another  family  (the  Hamburgers)  with  five 
sons  at  the  front,  one  came  from  Australia  to  enlist  and  one 
from  the  Argentine.2  From  Cairo  hails  a  private  of  the 
igth  London  regiment,  a  champion  wrestler  of  nearly  six 
feet  four,  who  is  said  to  speak  thirteen  languages  including 
Tartar  and  Serbian!  And  in  all  these  armies  the  old 
Maccabaean  valor  which  had  not  feared  to  challenge  the 
Roman  Empire  at  its  mightiest,  and  to  subdue  which  a 
favorite  general  had  to  be  detached  from  the  less  formidable 
Britain,  has  been  proved  afresh.3  "The  Jewish  bravery 
astonished  us  all,"  said  the  Vice-Governor  of  Kovno, 
and,  indeed,  the  heroism  of  the  Russian  Jew  has  become  a 

irnie  richly-promising  Captain  Harold  L.  J.  Spielmann  was  killed  in 
Gallipoli. 

2  At  the  beginning  of  January,  1915,  I  wrote  the  following   appeal 
for   Jewish   recruits:    "Now  that  English  women  and   babes   are   being 
bombarded  in  cold  blood  by  German   pirates,   no  man  who  enjoys  the 
priceless  prerogative  of  British  citizenship   can  without  shame  refuse  to 
rally  to  Britain's  defence.    Especially  does  this  duty — this  proud  privilege — 
fall  on  the  sons  of  a  homeless  race  that  in  Britain — almost  alone  in  the 
world — have  found  liberty,  equality,  and  fraternity.    The  mere  fact  that  the 
Lord  Chief  Justice  belongs  to  the  race  that  even  in  'cultured'  Germany  is 
only  half -emancipated,  shows  that  in  England  Justice  is  Lord  and  Chief,  and 
that  the  downfall  or  even  the  bare  defeat  of  Britain  would  be  a  disaster  to 
civilization.    I  rejoice  that  our  young  Jews  by  enlisting  in  more  than  their 
due  proportion  have  already  testified  their  super-devotion  to  the  Empire  that 
spreads  its  wings  over  us,  and  I  rejoice  equally  that  the  War  Office,  by  ac- 
cording them  the  opportunity  of  serving  together,  has  recognized  that  their 
feeling  of  special  brotherhood  is  only  another  link  in  the  mighty  and  multi- 
ple chain  of  the  Empire,  and  that  their  union  is  only  a  greater  strength  for 
the  service  of  England.    May  your  Sh6far-call  rouse  the  old  Maccabaean 
thrill  of  heroic  ardor  and  sacrifice!" 

3  A  Canadian  lad,  not  yet  thirteen,  hid  as  a  stowaway,  managed  to  get  to 
the  front  as  a  trumpeter  and  despatch-carrier,  and  was  wounded.    No  won- 
der Lord  Kitchener  remarked  of  him,  "There's  blood  for  you."    The  blood, 
however,  was  that  of  the  famous  Samuel  Salant,  Rabbi  at  Jerusalem,  whose 
grandson  he  is. 


THE   WAR  AND   THE   JEWS  383 

household  word.  More  than  four  hundred  privates — they 
cannot  be  officers — were  accorded  the  Order  of  St.  George 
within  a  few  weeks,  as  well  as  a  nurse  whose  name  is  cen- 
sored. One  Jew,  who  brought  down  a  German  aeroplane, 
was  awarded  all  four  degrees  of  the  Order  at  once.  Another 
has  received  a  gold  medal  for  exceptional  bravery.  "The 
capture  of  the  line  of  Jaroslav  forts,"  says  the  Times  (Oct.  4, 
1914)  "was  directly  due  to  the  heroism  and  cleverness 
of  a  young  private."  In  England  Lieutenant  de  Pass  won 
the  Victoria  cross  for  carrying  a  wounded  man  out  of  heavy 
fire,  and  perished  a  few  hours  later  in  trying  to  capture  a 
German  sap.  Two  other  Jews  figure  among  the  V.  C's., 
and  many  in  the  lesser  distinctions.  In  Austria  up  to  the 
end  of  the  year  the  Jews  had  won  651  medals,  crosses,  etc. 
In  France  Sergeant  Netter  gained  the  much  coveted 
military  medal.  "I  give  my  life  for  the  victory  of  France 
and  the  peace  of  the  world, "  wrote  a  young  immigrant  Jew 
who  died  on  the  battlefield.  A  collection  of  letters  from 
German  soldiers,  published  by  the  Jewish  Book-shop  of 
Berlin,  reveals  equal  devotion  to  Germany,  where  the 
Jews  have  shared  to  the  full  in  the  rain  of  "iron  crosses." 
(5868  up  to  the  end  of  March,  twenty-six  of  the  First  Class.) 
The  King  of  Serbia  has  paid  express  tribute  to  "the  con- 
stancy, the  valor  and  the  devotion  of  the  Jews  who  are 
serving  in  my  army."  And  to  the  question,  "What  shall 
it  profit  the  Jew  to  fight  for  the  whole  world?"  a  Yiddish 
journalist,  Mr.  Morris  Meyer,  has  found  a  noble  answer. 
There  is  a  unity  behind  all  this  seeming  self-contradiction, 
he  points  out.  "All  these  Jews  are  dying  for  the  same 
thing — for  the  honor  of  the  Jewish  name." 


384  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

IV 

" SUFFERANCE  THE  BADGE" 

And  yet  these  are  not  really  Jewish  forces  even  in  the 
religious  sense,  for  they  waive  their  religious  demands. 
The  Anglo- Jewish  volunteer,  who  might  easily  stipulate 
for  special  treatment,  accepts  the  very  disregard  of  his 
dietary  and  ritual  that  constitutes  the  tragedy  of  Russo- 
Jewish  conscription.  While  the  Indian  troops  are  scrupu- 
lously safeguarded  in  their  dietary,  while  beef  and  pork 
are  kept  religiously  remote,  while  the  Mohammedan,  Sikh 
and  Hindoo  have  each  their  slaughterer  to  kill  the  goats, 
by  "halal"  for  the  Moslem  and  by  "jatka"  for  the  others, 
the  Jewish  soldiers  in  England,  France  and  Germany  are 
limited  to  army-chaplains  or  Field-Rabbis  who  distribute 
prayer-books  and  administer  to  the  dying  (when  they 
chance  to  come  upon  them)  the  consolations  of  their  neg- 
lected religion.  Soldiers  under  the  ever-present  shadow  of 
death  are  naturally  susceptible  to  their  childish  memories. 
"On  Seder  night,"  wrote  an  English  recruit  from  the 
trenches,  "I  could  picture  everyone  at  home,  sitting  round 
the  Passover  table,  and  the  thought  made  me  feel  as  if 
I  could  cry  my  eyes  out."  A  Jewish  battalion  would  ap- 
parently have  attracted  volunteers  both  racially  and 
spiritually.  And  yet  the  Anglo- Jewish  community  frowned 
upon  the  suggestion,  and  the  Jewish  chaplain  himself, 
the  zealous  hard-worked  chaplain  whose  labors  would 
have  been  so  lightened  by  concentration,  did  his  best  to 
keep  his  flock  sundered  and  dispersed.  This  instinctive 
shrinking  from  solidarity  is  doubtless  a  heritage  of  the 
tragic  centuries.  The  Jew  is  so  old  and  worldly  wise. 
Experience  has  burnt  into  him  that  together  with  the  move- 
ment of  attraction  towards  the  Jew  in  moments  of  na- 
tional crisis — simultaneously  with  the  process  that  knits 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  385 

him  with  the  nation  in  love  and  service — goes  a  reverse 
movement  of  repulsion.  The  very  drawing-together  of 
the  nation  in  the  stress  and  zest  and  blood-sacrifice  of  war 
enhances  the  national  consciousness  and  rouses  a  keener 
historic  sense  of  the  native  tradition,  before  which  the 
Jew  looms  more  foreign  than  ever. 

Thus,  even  in  England,  prejudice  has  wakened  in  the 
Provinces,  particularly  at  Leeds.  In  Liverpool  cabinet- 
makers have  refused  to  work  with  Jewish  craftsmen,  even 
in  war  contracts.  And  in  a  southern  seaport  there  is  a 
grimly  amusing  story  of  a  Jewish  chemist,  who  in  the 
exuberant  patriotism  begotten  of  ten  happy  and  pros- 
perous years  in  England,  resolved  to  put  up  war-bulletins 
in  his  highly  popular  shop-window.  He  started  well  enough 
with  "  England  declared  war  against  Germany  at  n  p.  m. 
last  night."  Unfortunately  some  inner  imp  of  mischief, 
taking  advantage  of  his  imperfect  idiom,  inspired  him  to 
add  in  a  burst  of  loyal  emotion,  "God  help  England!" 
The  town  was  instantly  ablaze.  England  needed  no  such 
help,  the  poor  bewildered  patriot  was  assured  with  oaths, 
she  was  quite  able  to  beat  Germany  off  her  own  bat.  And 
under  a  shower  of  stones  which  broke  his  windows  and 
shattered  those  wonderful  blue  and  green  bottles,  he  fled 
for  his  life  through  the  back  door.  Truly  the  Jew  has 
obeyed  the  maxim  of  Nietzsche  to  "live  dangerously." 
He  has  lived  with  all  peoples,  from  the  Greeks  and  Romans 
to  the  Germans  and  the  French,  from  Assyrians  to  Amer- 
icans, and  his  instinctive  fear  of  them  all  is  a  lurid  sidelight 
on  the  history  of  the  world.  As  a  commentary  on  Chris- 
tianity it  is  too  sad  for  tears. 


386  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 


THE  REDDLE  OF  RUSSO-JEWRY 

The  devotion  of  the  Jew  to  the  British  flag  needs  no 
explanation.  Both  socially  and  by  legislation  England  has 
given  the  world  a  lesson  in  civilization.  And  if  France 
only  just  escaped  the  pollution  of  the  Dreyfus  affair,  if 
Germany  and  Austria  are  anti-Semitic  in  temper,  all  these 
countries  have  yet  given  the  Jew  his  constitutional  rights, 
and  the  Kaiser  in  particular  has  had  the  sense  and  the  spirit 
to  turn  his  ablest  Jews  into  friends  and  henchmen.  The 
appointment  of  several  hundred  officers  during  the  war  has 
probably  removed  the  last  tangible  grievance  of  German 
Jewry.  As  for  Turkey  she  has  been  since  1492  a  refuge  of 
Jewry  from  Christian  persecution,  while  Italy,  which  has 
had  a  Jewish  Prime  Minister  as  well  as  a  Jewish  War 
Minister  (Count  Ottolenghi)  stands  equal  with  England 
in  justice  to  the  Jew.  But  that  the  Russian  Jews,  yet 
reeking  from  the  blood  of  a  hundred  pogroms,  should  have 
thrown  themselves  into  Russia's  struggle  with  almost 
frenzied  fervor,  this  is,  indeed,  a  phenomenon  that  invites 
investigation,  and  invites  it  all  the  more  because  the 
Jews  in  America,  remote  from  the  new  realities,  continue 
their  barren  curses  against  Russia,  and  include  in  their 
malisons  those  who,  like  myself,  proclaim  the  cause  of  the 
Allies  the  cause  of  civilization. 

It  would  be  easy  to  dismiss  the  enthusiasm  of  the  Rus- 
sian Jews  as  more  politic  than  patriotic  or  to  say  that  they 
have  made  a  virtue  of  necessity.  But  it  bears  all  the  marks 
of  a  sincere  upwelling,  a  spiritual  out-reaching  to  their 
fellow-Russians.  Such  scenes  as  marked  the  proclamation 
of  war  have  never  been  known  in  Russian  Jewry.  The 
Jewish  Deputy  in  the  Duma  and  the  Jewish  press  were  at 
one  in  proffering  heart  and  soul  to  the  country.  From  the 


THE   WAR  AND   THE  JEWS  387 

Great  Synagogue  of  St.  Petersburg  five  thousand  Jews, 
headed  by  the  Crown  Rabbi,  marched  to  the  Tsar's  Palace, 
and  kneeling  before  it,  sang  Hebrew  hymns  and  the  Russian 
Anthem.  Their  flags  bore  the  motto:  "There  are  no  Jews 
or  Gentiles  now."  At  Kieff  ten  thousand  Jews,  carrying 
Russian  banners  and  the  Scrolls  of  the  Law,  paraded  the 
town,  and  similar  demonstrations  occurred  wherever  Jews 
dwelt.  A  Warsaw  writer  records  that  the  Jews  wept  with 
emotion  in  the  synagogues  as  they  prayed  for  Russia's  vic- 
tory. Thousands  of  youths  who  had  escaped  conscription 
offered  themselves  as  volunteers;  in  Rostoff  even  a  girl 
smuggled  herself  in  among  them  and  went  through  several 
battles  before  she  was  detected.  The  older  generation 
poured  out  its  money  in  donatives.  The  Dowager  Empress 
accepted  and  named  a  Red  Cross  Hospital.  One  wealthy 
Jew  in  the  province  of  Kherson  undertook  to  look  after 
all  the  families  of  Reservists  in  six  villages,  or  1380  souls. 

Something  must  perhaps  be  discounted  for  the  hysteria 
and  hypnosis  of  war-time.  And  other  factors  than  pa- 
triotism proper  may  have  entered  into  the  enthusiasm. 
The  young  generation  had  reached  the  breaking  point. 
Baffled  of  every  avenue  of  distinction,  the  most  brilliant 
blocked  from  the  schools  and  universities  by  the  diabolical 
device  of  admitting  even  the  small  percentage  by  ballot 
and  not  by  merit,  grown  hopeless  of  either  Palestine  with- 
out or  the  Social  Revolution  within,  the  young  Jews  hovered 
gloomily  between  suicide  and  baptism,  between  depravity 
and  drink.  Some  with  a  last  glimmer  of  conscience  and 
faith  had  thought  to  avoid  the  stigma  of  Christianity  by 
becoming  merely  Mohammedans:  others  to  dodge  at  least 
the  Greek  Church  had  exploited  an  Episcopalian  mis- 
sionary. But  even  for  these  Russia  refused  to  open  up  a 
career.  To  this  desperate  generation  the  war  came  as 
an  outlet  from  a  blind  alley,  a  glad  adventure.  Hence 


388  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

the  reckless  bravery  on  the  battlefield.  But  there  was 
reason,  too,  in  the  ecstasy.  England,  ever  the  Jew's  star 
of  hope,  was  at  last  to  fight  side  by  side  with  Russia.  For 
the  Russian  the  Alliance  was  a  pride,  for  the  Jew  an  augury 
of  Liberty.  The  great  democracies  of  the  West  would 
surely  drag  Russia  in  their  train.  And  for  the  elders  the 
fear  of  Germany  was  the  beginning  of  wisdom.  The  very 
first  day  of  the  war  she  had  taken  possession  of  the  unde- 
fended town  of  Kalicz  on  the  Russian  border  and  in  this 
town,  more  than  a  third  Jewish,  had  initiated  her  policy  of 
"frightfulness."  And  mingling  with  this  sinister  first  im- 
pression came  the  stories  of  wealthy  Jews  returning  from 
Karlsbad,  Wiesbaden  and  other  summer  resorts  from 
which  they  had  been  ejected  as  "alien  enemies."  The 
Jew  began  to  cling  to  the  devil  he  knew,  to  realize  that, 
after  all,  Russia  was  his  home. 

But  when  every  allowance  is  made  for  lower  factors, 
there  remains  a  larger  and  deeper  truth  underlying  the 
enthusiasm,  the  truth  which  it  takes  a  poet  to  feel  and 
which  found  its  best  expression  in  the  words  of  the  Russo- 
Yiddish  writer,  Shalom  Asch,  whose  dramas  have  been 
played  in  Berlin  and  whose  books  published  in  English. 
Germany's  aeroplanes  had  rained  down  on  the  Pale  not 
bombs  but  leaflets,  announcing  herself  as  the  deliverer  of 
the  oppressed  and  promising  to  grant  the  Jews  equal  rights. 
To  these  seductive  attempts  to  exploit  the  Jewish  resent- 
ment against  Russia,  Shalom  Asch  answered  sternly:  "'The 
oppressed  peoples  under  the  Russian  yoke'  have  risen  as 
one  man  against  the  German  bird  of  prey.  .  .  .  The 
Jews  are  marching  in  the  Russian  ranks  for  the  defence  of 
their  Fatherland.  Nor  is  it  the  youth  alone  that  has  done 
its  duty.  In  every  town  of  Russia  Jews  have  established 
committees:  our  sisters  are  joining  the  Red  Cross,  our 
fathers  are  collecting  funds.  .  .  .  Thousands  of  Russo- 


THE  WAR  AND   THE  JEWS  389 

Jewish  volunteers  have  enlisted  in  France  .  .  .  even  from 
America,  where  Germany  has  tried  to  exploit  our  suffer- 
ings, they  are  beginning  to  come.  For  this  is  not  a  war  to 
defend  the  Russian  bureaucracy  which  is  responsible  for 
the  pogroms,  but  to  defend  the  integrity  of  our  Father- 
land. .  .  .  Nor  do  we  do  our  duty  in  order  to  'earn' 
equal  rights  .  .  .  but  because,  deeply  hidden  in  our  hearts, 
there  is  a  burning  feeling  for  Russia.  .  .  .  Look  at  America 
where  hundreds  of  societies  and  streets  bear  the  names  of 
our  Russian  towns.  .  .  .  No  Pale,  no  restrictions,  no 
pogroms,  can  eradicate  from  our  hearts  this  natural  feeling 
of  love  for  our  country,  and  God  be  thanked  for  it!  .  .  . 
Nobody  gives  a  Fatherland  and  nobody  can  take  it  away. 
We  have  been  in  Russia  as  long  as  the  Slav  peoples.  The 
history  of  the  Jews  in  Poland  begins  with  the  very  first 
page  of  Polish  history.  Equal  rights  must  be  ours  because 
for  a  thousand  years  and  more  we  have  absorbed  into  our 
blood  the  sap  of  the  Slav  soil,  the  Slav  landscape  is  re- 
flected in  our  thought  and  imagination.  We  shall  fight 
against  the  system  of  Government  which  refuses  to  recognize 
our  equality,  as  we  fought  against  it  in  1905.  But  the  Rus- 
sian soil  is  sacred,  it  belongs  to  the  peoples  of  Russia,  and 
whoever  dares  to  touch  it  will  find  in  the  Jew  his  first  foe! " 

VI 

POLES  VERSUS  JEWS,  RUSSIA  INTERVENING 

In  1912  the  leading  organ  of  the  Warsaw  Jewry  con- 
sulted me  on  a  burning  question  of  internal  politics  on  which, 
it  was  said,  the  fate  of  the  Jews  of  Poland  hung.  The 
Poles  had  put  up  for  the  Duma  an  anti-Semitic  candidate 
and  threatened  pogroms  if  the  Jews  of  Warsaw,  whose 
numbers  controlled  the  election,  did  not  vote  for  him. 
While  deprecating  responsibility  and  pointing  out  that 
no  outsider  could  gauge  the  factors,  I  yet  could  not  but 


3 QO  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

add  my  voice  to  those  that  declared  a  vote  against  them- 
selves to  be  too  degrading.  The  Jews  chose  the  manlier 
course.  True,  they  still  voted  for  a  Pole,  they  did  not 
put  forward  a  Jew,  but  at  least  they  threw  out  the  avowed 
Jew-hater.  The  threatened  results  followed.  The  first 
stroke  was  the  establishment  of  a  ruthless  boycott,  which 
soon  ruined  thousands  of  Jewish  artisans,  dealers,  shop- 
keepers. No  Polish  doctor  would  treat  a  Jew,  no  chemist 
make  up  a  prescription.  Nor  did  murderous  riots  fail; 
but  here  Russia  intervened — to  keep  down  Polish  national- 
ism! Into  this  embittered  atmosphere  broke  the  war. 

When  the  Grand  Duke  published  his  historic  promise 
of  autonomy  for  Poland,  the  Jews  rejoiced  equally  with 
the  Poles.  But  the  Poles  were  not  to  be  pacified.  "  There 
is  but  one  thing  that  Russia  expects  of  you/'  the  Grand 
Duke  had  warned  them;  "that  you  respect  the  rights  of 
those  nationalities  with  which  history  has  bound  you." 
This  statesmanlike  proviso  fell  on  deaf  ears — the  Poles 
on  the  verge  of  their  own  freedom  were  busy  devising  how 
ta  oppress  another  race,  complaining  that  it  adulterated 
their  nationality,  and  wildly  proposing  its  emigration 
en  masse  to  America.  One  paper  actually  published  a 
picture  of  Jews  killing  a  Christian  child  for  its  blood  for 
Passover  cake — "a  practice  exposed  in  the  Beilis  case." 
But  no  Polish  intellectual  has  come  forward  to  rebuke 
the  mob  on  behalf  of  the  Jews,  though  the  Russian  intel- 
ligentsia is  solid  for  them.  "Freedom  shrieked  when  Kos- 
ciuszko  fell,"  but  it  is  the  race  of  Kosciuszko  that  now 
looms  as  the  foe  of  freedom. 

A  most  instructive  document  has  come  into  my  hands, 
drawn  up  by  the  Polish  committee  in  Paris  which  was 
deputed  by  the  French  Government  to  certify  the  Polish 
nationality  of  individuals  claiming  to  remain  in  Paris. 
For  at  the  expulsion  of  alien  enemies,  it  had  been  decided 


THE   WAR  AND   THE  JEWS  39! 

to  exempt  those  races,  such  as  Alsatians,  Czechs  and  Poles, 
that  were  only  German  or  Austrian  subjects  by  force  of 
compulsion.  Now  the  Poles  of  Paris  had  long  suffered 
from  the  grievance  that  the  Prefecture  of  Police  refused 
to  recognize  them  as  a  separate  nationality,  classifying 
them  as  Germans,  Austrians  or  Russians,  according  to 
the  particular  slice  of  Poland  they  hailed  from.  No  sooner 
was  the  Polish  nationality  re-established,  however,  than 
this  Committee  reported  against  the  inclusion  of  Polish 
Jews  in  the  list  of  the  exempt,  and  even  went  out  of  its 
way  to  credit  the  Jews  of  Russia,  Austria,  and  Germany 
with  one  and  the  same  nationality — and  that  a  German! 
For  is  not  the  dialect  of  them  all  Yiddish,  and  is  not  Yiddish 
a  form  of  German? 

In  Russian  Poland  "pro-German"  was  the  word  against 
the  Jews.  In  Austrian  Poland,  however,  it  had  to  be  re- 
placed by  "pro-Russian,"  unless  in  the  portions  conquered 
by  Russia,  when  "pro-German"  came  in  useful  again. 
In  all  parts  they  were,  of  course,  accused  of  hoarding  coin 
and  food-supplies,  though,  according  to  an  Italian  paper, 
in  Austrian  Poland  the  arch-speculator  in  corn  was  no 
other  than  the  Arch-Duke  himself.  Thus  in  the  midst 
of  their  own  terrible  sufferings  the  Poles,  by  denouncing 
the  Jews,  poured  oil  on  the  flames  of  hell.  Whenever  a 
town  taken  by  one  side  was  retaken  by  the  other,  Poles 
hastened  to  the  conqueror  to  accuse  Jews  of  being  Russian 
spies  or  German  agents,  as  the  case  might  demand.  If 
the  Jews  went  out  with  the  civil  population  to  meet  the 
incoming  invader  and  to  demand  peaceful  treatment,  they 
were  liable  to  be  denounced  subsequently  as  traitors;  if 
they  cowered  at  home,  they  were  immediately  denounced 
as  the  one  inexorable  element.  The  fact  that  Germany 
had  made  a  rival  promise  of  Polish  autonomy  exposed  all 
Polish  inhabitants  to  cruel  cross-currents  of  temptation, 


3Q2  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

and  doubtless  divided  their  house  still  more  against  itself. 
It  is  a  profound  lesson  for  statesmen  that  the  only  section 
of  Poland  that  was  satisfied,  and  that  both  offers  of  au- 
tonomy left  cold,  was  Galicia,  for  Austrian  Poland  had  its 
constitutional  rights,  and  was  free  to  live  its  own  life. 

It  is  natural  to  assume,  therefore,  that  some  Jews  on  the 
Russian  borders  of  Galicia  may  have  gravitated  towards 
Austria  in  the  hope  of  escaping  the  Russian  yoke.  We 
know  indeed,  that,  at  Kielce  the  Poles  themselves  danced 
the  streets  at  the  prospect  of  being  rid  of  Russia.  But  that 
the  Jews  played  everywhere  a  double  part  is  a  pure  fantasy 
of  Polish  hate.  Military  law  is  not  far  removed  from  lynch 
law,  yet  Jews  were  acquitted  of  these  charges  even  by 
courts-martial.  In  Samosz  after  five  Jews  had  been  hanged, 
a  Russian  pope  came  forward  and  unmasked  the  Polish 
plot,  showing  that  it  was  the  denouncers  themselves  who 
had  trafficked  with  the  Austrians.  At  Krasnik  the  Rabbi 
was  so  sure  of  the  innocence  of  his  flock  that  he  offered 
his  own  neck  to  the  noose  instead— and  the  offer  was  ac- 
cepted! 

Orloff,  the  Chairman  of  the  Real  Russians  of  Moscow, 
sent  to  Poland  to  investigate,  reported  that  the  Jews  were 
more  loyal  than  the  Poles, — a  report  which  cost  his  expul- 
sion from  the  party.  Even  Stephen  Graham,  who  has 
become  the  mouthpiece  of  Darkest  Russia,  gives  the  Jew 
a  certificate  of  loyalty.  They  were  further  accused  of 
poisoning  the  wells,  an  accusation  last  made  against  them 
in  these  regions  in  1364,  when  Casimir  the  Great  gave 
the  Jews  of  Kalicz  a  charter  of  protection  against  such 
charges. 

One  must  not  suppose,  however,  that  the  Poles  were 
always  conscious  perjurers — even  in  England  we  know 
how  war  sets  up  a  very  madness  of  denunciation — an 
epidemic  of  espionitis.  Did  not  the  Home  Secretary  report 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  393 

to  Parliament  that  he  had  investigated  a  hundred  thousand 
accusations  without  finding  a  single  spy?  Imagine  the 
state  of  mind  in  a  country  of  peasants  already  saturated 
with  Jew-hate.  Even  Jews  saying  their  prayers  were 
supposed  to  be  communicating  with  the  enemy  by  wireless 
telephony.  And  the  Russians  who  at  the  bidding  of  the 
Poles  executed  rough-and-ready  injustice  were  not  wilful 
persecutors.  Indeed,  no  small  part  of  the  blame  must  be 
placed  on  the  German  newspapers,  which  boasted  that  the 
Russian  Jews  were  their  allies.  A  Russian  Army  Order 
now  before  me  quotes  these  papers  and  enjoins  that  Jewish 
hostages  shall  always  be  taken,  "to  assure  the  army  from 
the  bad  influence  of  the  Jewish  population."  We  need 
look  no  further  for  the  origin  of  the  215  pogroms  reported 
from  Poland. 

Whether  all  these  pogroms  really  took  place,  and  how 
many  of  the  gruesome  details  are  true,  cannot  be  estab- 
lished at  present.  Russia — after  her  financial  confabula- 
tion with  the  British  Treasury — denied  that  any  were 
authentic.  Austria  and  Germany  through  equally  official 
channels  maintain  that  the  reality  is  even  worse.  As  for 
the  Press,  Bismarck's  discovery  that  it  can  be  manipulated 
is  now  common  property.  The  newspapers,  instead  of 
increasing  information,  only  thicken  the  fog.  Perhaps  it 
is  the  character  of  hell  to  have  "No  light,  but  rather  dark- 
ness visible."  In  Milton's  hell  this  served  only  to  "  dis- 
cover fights  of  woe,"  and  in  Poland  there  is  sufficient  il- 
lumination to  show  us  spectacles  best  left  dark. 

It  is  significant  that  the  Jewish  Deputy's  answer  in  the 
Duma  to  Sazonoffs  denial  of  outrages  was  suppressed  in 
the  Russian  papers.  But,  entirely  discounting  German 
sources,  there  are  before  me  too  many  letters  from  natives 
of  those  hapless  regions,  too  many  indictments  from  neu- 
trals like  Brandes,  too  many  cries  of  horror  from  Russians 


394  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

like  Prince  Paul  Dolgorukoff,  and,  above  all,  too  many 
unconscious  admissions  in  the  Russian  and  Polish  press, 
to  leave  any  hope  that  this  dolorous  chapter  of  Jewish 
history  is  only  a  pro-German  figment  of  the  pogrom  at 
Josef ow.  I  even  possess  the  names  of  81  victims.  Poland 
has  been  full  of  "Jews  in  great  numbers,  wandering  about, 
lost,  shot  at,  accused  of  being  spies,  arrested,  liable  to  exe- 
cution." (The  description  is  Stephen  Graham's.)  A  Russian 
journalist  gives  us  a  vivid  picture  of  these  hegiras — trains 
packed  from  floor  to  roof  with  half-dressed  people,  or  great 
processions  of  men,  women  and  children,  trudging  for  days 
the  wintry  roads  to  Warsaw,  their  toes  peeping  out  of  their 
boots,  a  woe-begone  mass  of  bundles  and  babies,  jeered  at  by 
the  Polish  villagers.  Fifty  have  been  buried  at  Warsaw  in 
a  single  day  in  a  melancholy  national  procession.  And 
from  every  quarter  these  streams  of  misery  have  flowed  into 
Warsaw,  till  the  floor  of  every  synagogue  and  Jewish  build- 
ing was  packed  with  sleeping  populations. 

The  last  hours  of  the  great  Yiddish  novelist,  Perez,  were 
spent  in  receiving  myriads  of  the  simple  folk  whose  lives 
and  naive  faith  he  has  so  wonderfully  described:  a  cart 
at  the  head  of  each  congregation  carried  its  Scrolls  of  the 
Law,  and  often  its  violated  virgins — "equally  sacred/' 
said  the  Poet. 

VII 

RUSSIA  AGAINST  RUSSIA 

Neither  of  the  two  great  Jewish  issues — the  abolition  of 
the  Pale  in  Russia,1  and  the  return  to  Palestine — can  fail 
to  be  profoundly  affected  by  the  war. 

1 A  fortnight  after  the  outbreak  of  the  war  (August  18,  1914),  I  addressed 
to  the  Times  a  letter  upon  this  point: 

"The  rumor  reported  in  your  issue  of  to-day  that  the  Tsar  is  about  to 
give  civil  and  political  rights  to  his  Jews  will,  if  confirmed,  do  much  to  re- 
lieve the  feelings  of  those  who,  like  myself,  believe  that  the  Entente  with 
Russia  was  too  high  a  price  to  pay  even  for  safety  against  the  German  peril. 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  395 

To  follow  the  movement  of  opinion  in  Russia  on  the  Jew- 
ish question  has  been  like  watching  the  swaying  of  the 
battle-line  in  Flanders.  It  is  clear  that  the  good  and  evil 
spirits,  that  Ormuzd  and  Ahriman,  are  at  tug  of  war.  And 
the  vacillations  are  reflected  in  the  utterances  of  Russian 
politicians.  Professor  Milyukof,  the  Liberal  leader,  who  at 
the  outset  of  the  war  saw  freedom  coming  to  the  Jews, 
now  sees  it  hopelessly  receding.  A  hundred  circumstances 

Not  that  the  Russians  are  not  a  fine  people;  it  is  only  with  the  Russian 
Government  that  civilization  has  a  quarrel,  and  the  quarrel  is  as  much  on 
behalf  of  her  Russian  as  her  Jewish  subjects.  The  offer  of  autonomy  to 
Poland — even  if  it  is  only  a  good  stroke  of  business — shows  that  that  Govern- 
ment is  entering  upon  an  era  of  greater  intelligence,  and  learning  at  last 
from  her  British  ally  that  minorities  and  dependencies  are  attached  more 
closely  by  love  than  by  fear.  The  emancipation  of  the  Russian  Jews  would 
be  felt  as  an  immense  relief  in  many  countries,  not  only  among  Jews,  who 
have  felt  bitterly  that  the  old  land  of  freedom  was  helping  involuntarily  to 
perpetuate  the  Pale,  but  among  Christians  also,  for  all  civilization  suffers 
under  this  medieval  survival  with  its  sequelae  in  massacre  and  emigration. 
In  Russia  there  is  a  colossal  field — half  of  Europe  and  half  of  Asia — for  the 
energies  of  the  six  million  Jews  now  cooped  up  in  a  province  of  which  they 
are  forbidden  even  the  villages. 

"Their  enfranchisement  would,  indeed,  be  a  logical  consequence  of  the 
redemption  of  Poland,  for  how  could  Russia  permit  the  Jews  in  her  Polish 
dominion  to  be  freer  than  in  Russia  proper?  But  there  is  no  logic  in  Russia, 
and  it  is,  alas!  far  from  improbable  that  the  Poles,  now  engaged  hi  a  bar- 
barous boycott  of  then:  Jews,  would  be  stupid  enough  to  imitate  Russia 
and  deny  them  equality.  In  that  case  the  Jews  now  in  Austrian  and  German 
Poland  would  lose  their  hard-won  rights  just  as  the  Jews  of  Khiva  and  Bok- 
hara lost  theirs  when  these  regions  were  assigned  to  Russia.  And  Russian 
Jews  would  only  assuredly  count  as  human  beings  if  Russia,  instead  of  con- 
quering German  and  Austrian  Poland,  herself  loses  to  Germany  her  German- 
speaking  provinces.  In  these — and  they  include  the  bulk  of  the  Jewish 
Pale — the  Jews  would  be  seized  at  a  stroke  of  the  rights  they  have  so  long 
vainly  demanded  from  Russia.  Is  it  not  tragic  that  in  this  instance  civiliza- 
tion should  have  more  to  gam  from  German  militarism  than  from  our 
Eastern  ally?  I  hope  that  in  the  final  issue  of  this  cosmic  cataclysm  England 
will  not  be  found  the  catspaw  of  Powers  opposed  to  her  noblest  traditions, 
but  that  by  her  insistence  on  justice  and  freedom  all  round  she  will  retro- 
spectively justify  her  Entente,  show  a  glorious  profit  on  her  outlay  in  arma- 
ments, resume  her  moral  hegemony  of  the  world,  and  her  old  place  in  the 
affections  of  mankind." 


396  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

justify  either  view.  On  the  one  hand,  the  passionate  fidelity 
of  the  Jew  is  seen  to  touch  the  Russian  heart;  on  the  other 
hand,  the  forces  of  reaction  still  lurk,  and  are  intensified  by 
the  chauvinism  engendered  by  war.  One  day  we  hear  that 
the  diabolical  education  system  is  to  be  swept  away,  the 
next  the  Black  Hundreds  who  were  ready  to  embrace  the 
Jews  are  demanding  that  in  conquered  Galicia  the  Austrian 
Jews  should  be  hampered  by  the  same  educational  restric- 
tions as  in  Russia  proper,  and  that  even  their  lands  should 
be  confiscated — and  this  though  the  shrewder  Germany 
has  been  introducing  equal  rights  for  the  Jews  in  the 
parts  of  Poland  just  conquered  by  her!  One  day  the 
very  dock  laborers  of  Nicolayeff  send  a  thousand  roubles 
to  help  the  Polish  Jews,  the  next  the  Tsar  assents  to  the  new 
Local  Government  Bill  for  Poland,  forbidding  Jews  to  be 
even  mayors  or  town  clerks.  Now  the  Jew  Katz  becomes  a 
national  hero  for  keeping  back,  with  only  eight  men,  a  whole 
German  force,  anon  the  same  wounded  warrior  is  expelled 
from  a  hospital  in  Petrograd  and  a  section  of  the  Press 
clamors  for  the  exclusion  of  Jews  from  the  Army. 

But  the  brain  and  heart  of  Russia  are  sound.  It  is  from 
her  own  great  writer,  Andreyev,  that  has  come  the  touching 
picture  of  the  wounded  Jewish  soldier  slinking  into  the 
hospital  which  his  companions  enter  as  heroes,  and  hardly 
daring  to  groan  in  the  wards  for  fear  of  drawing  attention 
to  the  fact  that  he  is  outside  the  Pale.  And  into  this  waver- 
ing battle-line  of  good  and  evil,  of  Russia  against  Russia, 
comes  like  a  cavalry  charge  the  glorious  Manifesto  of  the 
Intellectuals,  signed  by  over  two  hundred  notables,  in- 
cluding Senators,  members  of  both  Houses,  professors, 
academicians,  and,  above  all,  the  greatest  writers  of  Russia. 
This  noble  document,  which  inter  alia  testifies  how  abomin- 
ably the  anti- Jewish  restrictions  have  been  maintained 
even  through  the  war  (wives  and  children,  for  example,  be- 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  397 

ing  unable  to  visit  their  husbands  and  fathers  dying  in  hos- 
pitals for  Russia),  pays  tribute  to  "the  sorely-tried  Jewish 
nation  which  has  given  to  the  world  many  sublime  contribu- 
tions in  the  spheres  of  religion,  philosophy  and  poetry  .  .  . 
and  which  is  now  again  submitted  to  trials  and  insulted 
by  false  charges."  After  recapitulating  the  Jew's  devotion 
to  the  common  cause,  it  stigmatizes  the  limitations  of 
his  rights  of  citizenship  as  "not  only  a  crying  injustice, 
but  also  a  method  damaging  to  the  very  interests  of  the 
state."  "Russians,"  it  concludes,  "let  us  bear  in  mind  that 
the  Russian  Jew  has  no  other  fatherland  than  Russia,  and 
that  nothing  is  dearer  to  a  man  than  the  soil  on  which  he 
is  born.  Let  us  understand  that  the  welfare  and  power  of 
Russia  are  inseparably  bound  up  with  the  welfare  and 
liberties  of  all  the  nationalities  that  constitute  the  whole 
Empire.  Let  us  conceive  this  truth,  let  us  act  in  accordance 
with  our  intelligence  and  our  conscience,  and  then  we  are 
sure  that  the  disappearance  of  all  kinds  of  persecution  of 
the  Jews  and  their  complete  emancipation,  so  as  to  be  our 
equals  in  all  rights  of  citizenship,  will  form  one  of  the  con- 
ditions of  a  really  constructive  Imperial  policy." 

Nor  is  this  inner  travail  for  righteousness,  though  by  far 
the  most  important  force  making  for  Jewish  emancipation, 
the  only  force  at  work.  The  assurance  I  had  the  privilege 
to  receive  from  Sir  Edward  Grey,  that  he  would  neglect 
no  step  to  encourage  it,  has  been  widely  published.1  But 
this  does  not  carry  us  far,  for  Russia  resents  interference  in 
her  internal  affairs.  "Russia  is  not  on  trial  in  this  war," 
said  the  Novoye  Vremya  haughtily,  and  even  Lord  Reading 
has  reminded  us  that  at  the  Peace  Settlement  we  shall  not 
be  making  terms  with  Russia.  The  real  importance  be- 

1  To  the  disgust  of  the  Zemschtchina,  the  organ  of  the  Black  Hundreds, 
which  says  it  is  calculated  to  produce  a  "coldness"  between  the  two  coun- 
tries. 


398  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

longs,  therefore,  to  Sir  Edward  Grey's  further  assurance 
to  me  that  at  the  end  of  the  war  no  transferred  population 
shall  be  deprived  of  its  status.  Hence  should  Russia  conquer 
any  portion  of  Galicia  she  will  have  to  leave  the  Jews  their 
pre-existing  equal  rights,  and  these  rights  will  then  be- 
come the  leverage  for  raising  the  Jewish  status  throughout 
the  rest  of  Russia.  For  it  is  impossible  that  Russia  will 
be  able  to  allow  her  new  subjects  an  equality  which  she 
refuses  to  the  old. 

In  any  event,  and  whatever  the  result  of  the  war,  irre- 
sistible economic  considerations  in  favor  of  Jewish  eman- 
cipation are  working  with  the  higher  forces.  It  has  at  last 
been  perceived  by  Russians  that  the  Jews  are  necessary  to 
Russia,  that  without  them  she  cannot  go  forward  on  the 
new  path  of  industrial  and  commercial  development,  and 
that  if  she  is  not  to  be  exploited  by  the  all-penetrating 
Germans,  she  must  be  taken  in  hand  by  her  own  subjects. 
To  capture  German  trade  the  Pale  of  Jewish  settlement 
must  be  abolished.  And  from  every  Christian  quarter, 
from  towns  and  conferences,  from  the  Imperial  Economic 
Council  of  Petrograd  itself,  come  petitions  for  its  abolition. 
The  loyal  response  of  the  Jews  to  the  recent  call  for  the 
mobilization  of  trade  and  commerce  has  made  the  need  of 
them  even  plainer.  And  the  very  hatred  of  the  Poles  for 
the  Jews  is  curiously  working  in  the  same  direction.  For 
the  Poles  allege  that  it  is  not  so  much  their  own  old-estab- 
lished Jews  they  object  to  as  the  immigrants  who  pour  in 
from  Russia,  Russianizing  everything,  and  undermining 
Polish  nationality,  and  the  Poles  have  gone  so  far  as  to  pre- 
vent the  native  Jews  co-operating  with  Jews  from  Russia 
proper  even  upon  war-relief  committees.  And  this  unwel- 
come westward  stream  of  immigration  they  trace  to  the 
economic  effects  of  the  existence  of  the  Pale.  Were  this 
only  abolished,  the  Jew  would  expand  eastwards  over 


THE  WAR  AND   THE  JEWS  399 

Russia,  not  come  pushing  into  Poland;  nay,  the  Jews 
already  in  Poland  would  begin  to  migrate  into  the  new 
territory  opened  up  to  the  Jew.  And  now  that  Poland  has 
been  warned  by  Brandes,  Luzzatti,  Andreyev,  and  other 
makers  of  European  opinion,  that  at  the  peace  congress  her 
own  autonomy  will  not  be  accorded  her  if  she  denies  equality 
to  her  minorities,  she  is  beginning  to  declare  that  a  modus 
vivendi  with  the  Jews  must  be  found,  and  it  is  certain  that 
in  this  compromise  she  will  demand  equal  rights  for  the 
Jews  throughout  the  rest  of  Russia;  lest  otherwise  they 
stream  towards  her  more  liberal  soil. 

And  not  only  are  these  forces  of  hate  working  for  Jewish 
emancipation,  but,  under  "the  Divinity  that  shapes  our 
ends,  rough-hew  them  how  we  will,"  these  forces  are  even 
making  for  the  rise  of  a  Jewish  land.  The  idea  of  Palestine 
or  some  other  territory  for  the  Jew  is  at  last  in  the  air.  An 
influential  Russian  paper,  the  Russkoe  Slovo,  has  started  a 
symposium  on  the  subject.  Even  Tsar  Nicholas,  according 
to  the  Novoye  Vremya,  favored  Palestine,  while  a  con- 
temporary Russian  statesman  would  accept  a  British 
Protectorate  over  Syria.  According  to  the  Novaya  Gazeta, 
it  is  East  Africa  or  some  German  colony  that  is  to  be 
assigned  to  the  Jews.  In  Italy  the  Palestine  ideal  is  com- 
bining the  Jews  under  Luzzatti  with  the  Catholics  under 
Tonnallo.  Gustave  Herve  preaches  it  in  France,  and  the 
Labor  Parties  of  the  world,  which  are  already  solid  for 
Jewish  emancipation,  would  not  oppose  this  supplementary 
measure.  Even  in  the  British  Cabinet  powerful  elements 
favor  the  claims  of  the  Jews  upon  Palestine.  Lovers  of  the 
"prophecies"  have  always  pinned  their  faith  to  Armaged- 
don. The  return  of  the  Jews  to  Palestine  was  always  to  be 
the  immediate  sequel  of  the  great  world-war.  Let  us  turn, 
therefore,  to  see  how  the  situation  is  shaping  in  the  Holy 
Land. 


400  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

The  Orient  is  pre-eminently  the  region  of  rumor  and 
fantasy,  and  the  reports  that  have  penetrated  to  us  from 
the  bazaars  of  Palestine  or  been  carried  by  a  myriad  ref- 
ugees are  more  contradictory  even  than  the  war  reports 
of  Europe.  The  Zionist  bank  has  been  officially  closed 
and  officially  forced  to  open.  Locusts  have  eaten  the  har- 
vest, and  it  will  be  more  abundant  than  ever.  In  part 
these  contradictions  merely  mirror  the  ever-changing  policy 
of  the  Porte.  We  may  distinguish  three  stages,  the  first 
before  Turkey  had  joined  in  the  war,  the  second  when  she 
behaved  according  to  Turkish  notions,  and  the  third  and 
still  ruling  phase  in  which  Germany  stepped  in  to  undo  the 
harm  to  the  general  cause  done  by  Turkey's  own  methods. 
To  the  first  phase  belongs  the  economic  damage  to  Pales- 
tine wrought  by  the  general  European  situation,  for  the 
trade  of  Palestine  depends  almost  entirely  on  the  dis- 
tant world — and  ships  were  few.  The  great  majority 
of  the  Jews  in  particular  live  on  sums  sent  from  Europe, 
and  the  mails  had  practically  ceased  to  run.  To  the  second 
phase  belong  the  seizure  of  food-supplies  and  munitions 
of  war  1  the  Ottomanization  or  expulsion  of  the  Palestine 
Jews,  their  enrolment  in  the  army,  unless  they  paid  the 
necessary  baksheesh,  the  attempt  to  uproot  Zionism,  destroy 
the  Jewish  colonies,  and  settle  Circassians  on  the  Jewish 
land.  To  the  third,  or  German- American  phase,  belong 
better  economic  conditions,  the  more  favorable  treatment 
of  the  Jews,  and  the  explanation  that  only  Zionism  with 
its  stamps,  flags,  and  symbols,  was  and  is  to  be  the  object 

1  We  have  a  vivid  account  of  the  situation  in  Jerusalem  from  Miss  Anne 
Landau,  the  Head-Mistress  of  the  Evelina  de  Rothschild  School,  who  was 
chivalrously  treated  by  Djemal  Pasha.  "The  colonists  had  to  give  up 
their  horses/their  carts,  their  oxen  and  cows,  their  laborers  and — sorest  wound 
perhaps  of  all — their  irrigation  pipes  which  conduct  the  water  to  the  orange 
groves.  In  Jerusalem  every  cab-horse  was  taken  and  all  enemy  property 
confiscated  .  .  .  very  soon  Palestine  was  like  a  corked  up  bottle." 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  401 

of  attack;  also  the  foregathering  of  Arabs  and  Jews  in 
Jerusalem.1  There  is  still,. however,  a  policy  of  ruthlessness, 
so  far  as  French  or  English  property  is  concerned,  and 
unfortunately  the  bulk  of  the  Jewish  colonies  belong  to 
Baron  Edmond  de  Rothschild,  of  Paris,  or  to  the  lea,  an 
association  which  controls  the  legacy  of  Baron  de  Hirsch. 

HELP  FROM  THE  UNITED  STATES 

It  has  been  a  blessing  for  the  Jews  of  Palestine  that, 
through  all  this  time  of  turmoil,  the  United  States  have 
been  represented  at  the  Sublime  Porte  by  Mr.  Morgenthau, 
who  combines  the  humanitarianism  of  the  American  with 
the  special  solicitude  of  the  Jew.  When  Mr.  Morgenthau 
passed  through  London,  on  his  way  to  his  post,  he  was  a 
prey  to  modest  shrinking;  had  he  known  he  would  have  to 
represent  half  the  world  in  war-time  he  would  probably 
have  drawn  back.  Yet  no  veteran  diplomatist  could  have 
done  better.  It  is  owing  to  him  that  speedy  help  for  Pales- 
tine was  forthcoming  from  the  Jews  of  the  United  States, 
and  it  was  his  son-in-law,  Mr.  Maurice  Wertheim,  who 
carried  the  gold  on  an  American  battleship,  supervised  its 
distribution  on  scientific  principles,  and  supplied  history 
with  the  one  reliable  account  of  the  situation.  By  gracious 
direction  of  the  Secretary  of  the  Navy,  Mr.  Josephus 
Daniels,  a  further  supply  of  food  was  sent  on  the  U.  S. 
collier,  Vulcan,  while  the  U.  S.  cruiser,  Tennessee,  trans- 
ported thousands  of  refugees  gratuitously  from  Jaffa  to 
Alexandria.2  For  expulsion  was  the  fate  of  all  Jews  who 

1  The  Jaffa  Hebrew  weekly,  Hapoel  Hazair,  states  that  Djemal  Pasha  has 
barricaded  the  Wailing  Wall.    Thus  is  the  Jew  denied  access  to  the  last 
fragment  of  his  ancient  glories. 

2  These  war-ships  coming  for  a  despised  race  greatly  put  up  the  Jewish 
status  among  the  Turks.    Jews  are  also  indebted  to  President  Wilson  for 
claiming  a  "Jewish  day"  for  collections  for  the  distressed  Jews  in  the  war- 


402  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

would  not  take  on  Ottoman  nationality  (at  a  fee),  and  it 
would  appear  that  only  the  Jews  of  Galilee  consented  to 
any  extent  to  become  Turks,  the  Jews  of  Judea  preferring 
exile.1 

But  if  the  cause  of  Zionism  has  thus  received  a  serious 
set-back,  if  the  heroic  work  of  the  colonists  for  a  whole 
generation  seems  undone,  if  the  old  Jewish  exodus  from 
Egypt  to  Palestine  has  been  reversed  after  three  thousand 
years  by  this  great  exodus  from  Palestine  to  Egypt,  the 
new  exodus  has  produced  a  strange  dramatic  episode, 
which  may  bring  Zionism  nearer  than  ever  to  its  hope. 
For  among  the  refugees  at  Alexandria  were  a  number  of 
young  Zionist  colonists,  tradesmen  and  students,  wishful 
neither  to  turn  Turk  nor  to  resume  the  Russian.  For  the 
suzerain  of  Palestine  they  might  have  been  ready  to  fight, 
had  not  the  Turks  declared  a  "Holy"  war,  which  these 
young  Jews  felt  was  as  little  their  business  as  to  fight  for 
the  Russian  they  had  long  since  quitted.  But  Egypt  had 
been  proclaimed  English,  and  inasmuch  as  Russian  law 
allowed  absent  subjects  to  fight  in  an  allied  army,  they 
would  fight  with  England — for  Palestine! 

The  idea  of  fighting  for  Palestine  was  not,  indeed,  new. 
It  had  more  than  once  been  brought  to  me  by  the  despair- 
ing younger  generation.  But  now  it  had  come  in  a  practi- 
cable form.  Through  their  spokesman,  a  Russo- Jewish 
journalist,  the  young  Zionists  begged  to  be  enlisted  as  a 
British-Palestine  battalion.  To  the  British  military  mind, 
nursed  on  the  Bible,  the  idea  did  not  lack  fascination,  and 

zone — a  proclamation  unique  in  history — and  for  declaring  that  if  he  were  at 
the  Peace  Conference  he  would  insist  on  rights  for  Russian  and  Rumanian 
Jews.  The  British  Government  also  generously  allowed  money  and  food  to 
reach  the  Jews  of  Palestine. 

1  The  Turkish  Government  with  delightful  informality  pressed  Mr.  Mor- 
genthau  to  join  the  Cabinet  as  Minister  of  Commerce  and  Agriculture.  He 
could  still  go  on  being  American  Ambassador,  they  said! 


THE  WAR  AND  THE  JEWS  403 

General  Maxwell,  the  Grand  Commander  of  Egypt,  ap- 
pointed Colonel  J.  H.  Patterson,  the  distinguished  Irish  sol- 
dier and  sportsman,  to  organize  the  corps.  The  Colonel 
cabled  to  me,  asking  for  a  message  of  encouragement,  and  I 
cabled  back  my  welcome  of  the  incident  as  an  omen  for  the 
establishment  of  a  British  Protectorate  in  Palestine.  This 
message,  toned  down  by  the  local  military  censorship  into 
a  wish  for  the  men's  " happy  return"  to  Palestine,  was 
read  to  them,  and  the  Colonel  made  a  speech  that  was 
translated  into  Hebrew,  and  ended  with  the  words:  "Pray 
with  me  that  I  should  not  only,  as  Moses,  behold  Canaan 
from  afar,  but  be  divinely  permitted  to  lead  you  into  the 
Promised  Land."  The  troops  were  then  solemnly  sworn 
in  by  the  Chief  Rabbi  of  Alexandria,  who  gave  a  stirring 
address,  and  then,  with  "Hedads"  for  King  George,  the 
Colonel,  and  the  cabler,  the  young  Zionists,  five  hundred 
strong,  marched  off  singing  their  national  hymn.  Hur- 
riedly equipped,  mainly  with  Turkish  rifles,  and  wearing  a 
small  brass  disc  with  the  "Shield  of  David"  over  their 
black  Turkish  greatcoats — or  a  red  shield  instead  of  a 
cross  for  the  Medical  Corps — they  pitched  their  tents  in 
the  old  Biblical  fashion,  and  the  word  of  command  rang 
through  the  air  in  Hebrew. 

After  only  six  weeks'  training  they,  with  their  thousand 
mules,  were  transferred  to  the  Dardanelles  as  the  "Zion 
Mule  Transport  Corps,"  whose  perilous  function  is  to 
bring  ammunition  and  stores  up  to  the  trenches.  Already 
they  have  been  publicly  thanked  by  the  General,  while  two, 
for  gallantry  in  operations  near  Krithia,  received  the  D. 

C.  M.  But,  as  one  of  the  wounded  said,  "Proud  as  I 
am  of  my  wound,  I  should  be  the  happiest  man  alive 
had  I  received  it  on  the  soil  of  Palestine."  1    The  origi- 

1  For  further  details  see  With  the  Zionists  in  Gallipoli  by  Colonel  Patterson, 

D.  S.  O.    He  says,  "The  troops  in  Gallipoli  always  said:  'Let  us  have  the 


404  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

nal  negotiator  of  the  corps  has  come  to  me  in  England 
on  a  mission  of  gathering  the  recruits  in  every  avail- 
able country.  Thus  after  a  gap  of  1,782  years,  and  as  if 
symbolically  at  the  very  moment  when  the  Turks  have 
prohibited  the  immemorial  prayer  at  the  Wailing  Wall, 
there  is  again  a  Jewish  army,  however  humble.  And  this 
army  is  in  alliance  with  the  British.  Palestine  alone  cannot 
solve  the  Jewish  problem,  and  "equal  rights  everywhere" 
remains  an  imperative  necessity.  But  only  Jewish  nation- 
alism can  ever  write  a  new  chapter  of  Josephus.  "They 
may  hang  us,  violate  our  women,  drag  us  through  the  seven 
hells, "  wrote  some  Russo- Jewish  volunteers  from  the  French 
trenches,  enclosing  their  pitifully  few  francs  for  Jewish 
relief  funds,  "but  we  will  remain  Jews." 

Zion  men.' "  British  Officers  used  to  write  and  say  that  they  had  never  met 
such  gallant  fellows.  They  were  in  fact  quite  fearless.  One  of  the  Jewish 
Officers  was  Captain  Trumpledor  who  had  already  been  decorated  by  the 
Tsar  with  the  cross  of  St.  George  in  gold  for  special  gallantry.  There  were 
nine  killed  and  sixty  wounded. 


"RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS  " 

Two  Letters  to  The  Nation 


SIR, — Is  no  organ  safe  from  Mr.  Stephen  Graham?  In 
his  self-appointed  role  of  defender  of  Holy  Russia,  that 
voluminous  young  writer  displays  a  vigilance  and  an  in- 
dustry positively  German,  and  an  efficiency  no  less  Teu- 
tonic in  its  disregard  of  established  standards.  His  latest 
exploit  is  an  attempt  to  capture  The  Nation.  But  those 
of  your  readers  who  may  be  impressed  by  the  plausible 
tone  of  his  letter  in  your  last  issue  may  be  recommended 
to  turn  to  his  article  under  the  same  title  in  the  current 
number  of  the  English  Review.  Throughout  that  article, 
Mr.  Graham  is  incredibly  engaged  in  fanning  the  almost 
extinct  embers  of  the  Blood  Accusation.  He  actually 
writes — in  language  which  even  the  Russian  Censor  would 
hardly  permit — "Beiliss  was  innocent — though  he  was 
actually  involved  in  the  murder.  Someone  was  guilty,  a 
madman  or  a  Jew,  and,  indeed,  the  probability  is  that  a 
Jew  actually  committed  the  crime.  Whether  it  was  for 
ritual  purposes  or  not  is  another  matter."  The  Beiliss 
case  reopened,  you  see,  the  whole  monstrous  medieval 
myth,  still  treated  as  a  live  possibility.  Indeed,  Mr.  Gra- 
ham's whole  article  reads  like  an  expansion  of  the  dialogue 
which  I  put  into  the  mouth  of  the  Jew-baiting  Russian 
Baron  in  The  Melting  Pot.  It  is  literary  mine-sowing, 
and  in  a  friendly  area,  for  350,000  Russian  Jews  are  now 
fighting  for  their  fatherland. 

405 


406  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

As  for  his  contribution  to  your  own  columns,  his  cool 
assertion  that  "no  harm  has  been  done  to  the  Jews  during 
this  war" — coming  as  it  does  at  a  moment  when  the  Polish 
Jews  are  living  through  one  of  the  greatest  tragedies  in 
history — almost  freezes  my  ink.  One  must  set  aside,  of 
course,  what  the  Jews  have  suffered  in  common  with  their 
fellow-Russians,  but  the  tale  of  their  special  miseries  is  so 
superfluously  tragic  that  it  has  brought  numerous  protests 
from  Russian  newspapers  and  Russian  parties.  Thus  al- 
ready in  the  Russkiya  Vedomosti  of  November  3rd,  Prince 
Paul  Dolgorukoff  denounced  that  pitiless  interpretation 
of  the  laws  of  the  Pale  by  which  the  Jewish  soldier's  nearest 
and  dearest  cannot  visit  his  death-bed  if  the  hospital  lies 
outside  the  prescribed  region,  or  which,  after  the  amputa- 
tion of  a  leg,  hounds  him  out  of  the  prohibited  area  as  soon 
as  he  can  hobble.  Is  it  for  the  purity  of  her  Christianity 
that  Mr.  Graham  has  become  the  apostle  of  Russia?  Well, 
her  Christian  chivalry  to  her  Jewish  lieges — and  many  a 
Russian  Jew  has  rallied  to  her  colors  who  was  safely  outside 
Russia — may  be  gauged  by  the  instances  collected  by  Mr. 
George  Kennan  in  the  American  Outlook  for  January  27th. 
Mr.  Kennan  has  been  accused  of  creating  the  "Rus- 
sia of  the  novelists."  He  has,  therefore,  wisely  confined 
himself  to  bald  extracts  from  Russia's  own  press,  such  as 
reports  of  wounded  Jewish  soldiers  being  excluded  even 
from  hospitals. 

Moreover,  Mr.  Graham  cannot  have  forgotten  the  recent 
historic  indictment  of  Poland  by  Brandes,  his  detailed  state- 
ment of  war  pogroms,  such  as  that  at  Josefow,  where,  under 
that  other  medieval  suspicion  of  "poisoning  the  wells," 
seventy-eight  Jews  were  killed,  many  women  violated, 
and  houses  and  shops  looted.  It  is  this  indictment  which 
has  transformed  Brandes  from  the  idol  of  Poland  to  a  dog 
of  a  Jew.  For  one  of  the  first  feats  of  the  great  humanist 


"  RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS  "  407 

was  to  expend  on  the  literature  and  romance  of  Poland  all 
the  enthusiasm  he  could  spare  from  neglecting  the  romance 
and  literature  of  his  native  Jewry.  Now,  a  generation 
later — disillusioned  over  the  Poles  who,  in  the  very  height 
of  their  struggle  for  freedom,  are  seeking  to  crush  or  uproot 
the  Jews  whom  they  originally  invited  to  settle  among 
them — Brandes  sorrowfully  recalls  his  youthful  rhapsodies. 
"  I  said,  Poland  stands  as  the  emblem  of  all  that  the  greatest 
of  mankind  have  loved  and  fought  for.  Am  I  to  feel  shame 
for  these  words  now  when  the  destiny  of  Poland  is  to  be 
fulfilled?"  Brandes's  generous  ardor  is  still  not  that  of  a 
Jew  on  behalf  of  the  Jews — as  Mr.  Graham  and  his  tribe 
pretend  of  all  such  natural  emotions — still  less  is  it  "pro- 
German";  it  is  the  old  universal  passion  for  freedom  and 
justice. 

Mr.  Graham,  waving  aside  ah1  these  facts  with  a  Pod- 
snappery  truly  magnificent,  observes,  with  bureaucratic 
toploftiness,  almost  as  himself  a  member  of  "the  spheres:" 
"The  Russian  Government  is  not  in  the  habit  of  entering 
the  journalistic  arena  to  deny  libels."  Why,  this  is  pre- 
cisely what  the  Russian  Government  did  when  it  officially 
denied  in  the  Times  of  January  22nd  the  libel  fathered  on 
M.  Sazonoff  by  Mr.  Stephen  Graham,  that  after  the 
war  nothing  would  be  done  for  the  Jews.  It  was  at  M. 
SazonofTs  own  house  at  lunch  that,  according  to  Mr. 
Graham,  the  Russian  Foreign  Minister  made  his  statement 
to  him,  and  as,  in  the  same  number  of  the  English  Review, 
Mr.  Graham  repeats  a  conversation  on  the  Jewish  question 
with  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  at  the  dinner-table,  I  can  only 
deplore  that  a  journalist  with  such  a  code  should  be  given 
such  prominence  in  the  Times,  or  that  a  writer  with  so 
much  engaging  enthusiasm  and  literary  charm  and  so 
precious  a  sense  of  Russian  mysticism  and  brotherhood, 
a  writer  who  might  really  help  Russia  and  England  to  help 


408  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

each  other,  should  have  gone  so  hopelessly  astray  in  the 
dreary  bogs  of  reactionary  politics. — Yours,  etc., 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL. 
February  i5th,  1915. 

II 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Nation 

SIR, — I  am  very  surprised  to  learn  from  Mr.  Stephen 
Graham  that  the  Lord  Chief  Justice  read  his  article  through 
before  publication  in  the  English  Review;  and  I  apologize 
to  him  for  assuming  he  had  reproduced  Lord  Reading's 
dinner-table  conversation  without  permission.  He  makes 
no  attempt,  however,  to  justify  that  article  (still  connecting 
Beilis  and  the  Jews  with  the  murder  which  everybody 
knows  was  committed  by  the  woman  Tcheviriakova),  or 
to  answer  Dr.  Brandes's  indictment  of  the  Poles,  or  to 
justify  his  assertion  that  "no  harm  has  been  done  the  Jews 
during  this  war;"  and  he  cannot  glide  away  with  some 
graceful  compliments  to  my  literary  merits.  I  had  already 
regretfully  acknowledged  his,  and  the  situation  is  too 
serious  for  posturings.  It  really  will  not  do  to  pretend 
that  I  am  "kicking  up  a  dust"  to  cover  that  the  Bund 
"had  been  publishing  false  news  of  a  pogrom  at  Lodz,  and 
so  weakening  the  strength  and  unity  of  the  Allies."  What 
have  I  to  do  with  the  Bund?  Moreover,  the  Bund  did  not 
confine  its  news  of  pogroms  to  Lodz,  and  it  added  that, 
under  pretext  of  treachery,  whole  Jewish  populations  had 
been  hounded  from  their  homes.  One  of  these  drives  was 
even  described  in  the  Daily  Mail  of  February  i5th. 
Mr.  Graham's  proof  that  there  was  no  pogrom  at  Lodz  is 
that  nothing  appeared  about  it  in  the  Russian  or  English 
press!  Doubtless  the  German  press  is  as  tainted  as  either, 
but  the  charge  that  215  pogroms  have  occurred  in  Poland 
is  most  solemnly  made  by  the  chaplain  of  the  Jewish  forces 


"  RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS  "  409 

in  Germany,  and  a  number  of  these  are  attested  from  a 
variety  of  other  sources  with  which  I  will  not  weary  or 
sicken  your  readers.  The  Rabbi  adds:  " There  is  no  hope 
of  seeing  an  end  to  these  horrors."  As  for  the  pogrom  in 
Lodz,  so  far  from  the  news  having  been  false,  or  nothing 
having  appeared  in  the  Russian  press,  the  Nowyj  Woschod, 
of  Petrograd  (November  26th),  said  in  a  paragraph  passed 
by  the  Censor:  "The  Military  Commandant  of  the  town 
of  Lodz,  who  received  a  Jewish  deputation,  begged  it  to  tran- 
quillize the  population,  as  those  guilty  of  the  pogrom  would 
be  punished  according  to  military  law."  In  fairness  to  Mr. 
Graham,  it  must  be  admitted  it  was  not  a  "bad"  pogrom, 
though  it  was  renewed  several  times,  and  included  the  ironic 
incident  of  the  wounding  of  a  Jewish  soldier  by  the  mob. 
Mr.  Graham's  suggestion  that  the  Jews  are  inventing 
slanders  against  Russia,  and  thereby  weakening  the  Allies, 
is  as  unworthy  as  it  is  mistaken.  At  the  outbreak  of  the 
war  the  English  organ,  Darkest  Russia,  ceased  publication 
with  the  dignified  remark  that  the  best  thing  it  could  now 
contribute  was  its  silence.  The  chivalrous  reply  of  the 
pro-Russian  press  was  to  fill  the  air  with  glorifications  of 
Russia  and  vilifications  of  the  Jews  under  cover  of  "the 
fog  of  war,"  relying  on  its  ability  to  becloud  and  menace 
any  Jewish  critic  with  the  suspicion  of  anti-Britishism  or 
even  pro-Germanism.  Mr.  Graham  seems  to  forget  that 
the  treason  to  the  cause  of  the  Allies  is  committed  by  the 
perpetrators  of  horrors,  not  the  narrators.  The  humor  of 
the  situation  is  that  in  defending  the  cause  of  the  Allies  I 
have  become  a  byword  in  the  German  press,  branded  as  a 
pro-Russian  turn-coat,  the  butt  of  lectures,  poems,  para- 
graphs, and  cartoons.  It  is  the  same  in  the  pro-German 
press  of  the  States.  Let  me  quote  only  one  sentence  from 
an  "Open  Letter"  addressed  to  me  by  the  notorious  Father- 
land of  New  York.  "Your  amazing  statement  that  'it  is 


410  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

better  that  the  Russian  Jews  should  continue  to  suffer 
than  that  the  great  interests  of  civilization  should  be  sub- 
merged by  the  triumph  of  Prussian  militarism'  surpasses 
in  its  cruelty  and  injustice  anything  I  have  ever  seen  written 
by  a  Jew."  And  this  although  my  plea  for  our  Allies  was 
enforced  by  Sir  Edward  Grey's  promise  to  me  to  neglect 
no  step  to  encourage  equal  rights  for  the  Jews  in  Russia. 
Imagine,  then,  the  effect  in  America  and  other  neutral 
countries,  whose  sympathies  the  British  Government  has 
desired  to  retain,  of  Stephen  Graham's  fire-brands  in  the 
Times.  It  is  he,  not  I  or  the  Bund,  that  has  been  playing 
the  German  game.  His  fantastic  solution  of  the  Polish- 
Jewish  problem — exclusion  of  the  Jews  from  any  rights 
under  Polish  autonomy  and  their  departure  in  their  millions 
to  America — appearing  as  it  did  in  an  organ  popularly 
supposed  to  be  the  very  voice  of  Britain,  created  a  panic 
throughout  the  Pale,  and  even  agitated  America  with 
apprehension  of  a  gigantic  immigration.  As  a  witty  Amer- 
can  cartoonist  put  it,  "Russia  grants  the  Jews  equal  rights 
— in  America! "  When  it  is  remembered  that  Germany 
does  give  the  Jews  equal  rights,  and  has  hastened  to  give 
them  even  to  the  Russian  Jews  in  conquered  Lodz,  while 
the  "Black  Hundred"  press  is  urging  Russia  to  take  them 
away  even  from  the  Austrian  Jews  in  conquered  Lemberg, 
it  will  be  understood  how  the  pro-German  effect  of  Stephen 
Graham's  Polish  propaganda  was  aggravated  when  he 
announced  that  Sazonoff,  the  Russian  Foreign  Minister, 
had  told  him  the  only  alleviation  the  Russian  Jews  were 
likely  to  find  after  the  war  was — the  deprivation  of  their 
right  to  serve  in  the  Army.  That  is  to  say,  the  Jew's  reward 
for  his  heroic  patriotism — and  eighty  Jewish  chevaliers  of 
St.  George  have  been  registered  in  Moscow  alone — is  to 
lose  his  one  equal  right — that  of  dying  for  Russia.  It  is  a 
pity  this  brilliant  idea  did  not  occur  to  Russia  before  she 


"  RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS"  411 

had  made  50,000  Jewish  widows.  But  if  Russia  does  mean 
to  throw  over  the  Jews,  the  least  she  could  do,  out  of  con- 
sideration for  her  Allies,  is  to  conceal  her  intentions.  No 
wonder  that  Sazonoff  and  the  Russian  Embassy  hastened 
to  disavow  their  indiscreet  exponent. 

Mr.  Graham  replies:  "I  have  never  written  anywhere 
that  M.  Sazonoff  said  that  nothing  would  be  done  for  the 
Jews."  This  is  mere  quibbling,  for  what  he  said  M.  Sazonoff 
offered  was  even  less  than  nothing.  In  the  Sunday  Times 
of  January  iyth,  Mr.  Graham  reported  the  conversation: 
"'Is  anything  likely  to  be  done  to  relieve  the  tension  of  the 
Jewish  problem?'  'M.  Sazonoff  thought  it  possible  that 
they  might  be  excused  military  service  in  future  if  they 
wished  it.  He  recognized  the  great  difficulty  of  dealing 
with  the  Jewish  problem,  but  spoke  enthusiastically  of  the 
coming  restoration  of  Poland.' '  But  the  repudiation  by 
the  Russian  Government  does  not  limit  itself  to  what  M. 
Sazonoff  said.  It  denies  he  made  any  statement  whatever. 
("  We  are  informed  that  M.  Sazonoff  has  made  no  statement 
whatsoever  concerning  the  Jewish  question  in  Russia." 
Times,  January  22nd.)  Yet,  in  your  last  issue,  Mr. 
Graham  asserts:  "M.  Sazonoff  gave  me  express  permission 
to  quote  his  remarks."  I  must  leave  them  to  fight  it  out 
between  themselves. 

But  if  Russia  does  mean  to  do  nothing  for  the  Jews,  the 
least  she  could  do,  out  of  consideration  for  her  Allies,  is  to 
conceal  her  intentions.  No  wonder  that  Sazonoff  and  the 
Russian  Embassy  hastened  to  disavow  their  indiscreet 
exponent. 

So  far  as  the  Jews  are  concerned,  the  effect  of  Mr.  Gra- 
ham's incessant  output  of  books  and  articles,  his  tireless 
discourses  in  clubs,  hotels,  halls,  and  churches,  is  to  prepare 
the  world  for  England's  abandonment  of  the  Russian  Jews 
at  the  end  of  this  war  of  freedom.  As  the  Pall  Mall  Gazette 


412  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

said,  in  winding  up  its  eulogy  of  his  new  book:  "To  demand 
rights  for  Russian  Jews  upon  English  or  American  analo- 
gies is  simply  to  treat  with  contempt  the  realities  of  an 
Empire  whose  political  intelligence  and  institutions  are 
still  in  embryo."  But  the  Jews  are  only  a  side  issue.  The 
real  danger  from  Mr.  Graham's  crusade  is  to  Russia  and 
to  England.  He  wishes  to  bring  Russia  and  England  to- 
gether. It  is  the  last  thing  he  should  do,  with  his  obviously 
sincere  desire  to  save  Russia  from  industrialism.  To  work 
day  and  night  to  introduce  Russia  to  "the  nation  of  shop- 
keepers" is,  indeed,  a  curious  way  of  saving  her  from  de- 
veloping like  the  West.  Also,  he  wishes  us  to  love  Russia. 
But  we  are  already  hopelessly  united  to  her,  commercially 
and  politically,  and  we  all  do  love  Russia — that  Russia 
whose  soul  has  been  revealed  to  us  by  the  great  writers 
whom  she  has  exiled  and  imprisoned.  How  can  we  not 
welcome  her  into  the  great  democratic  brotherhood  of 
England  and  France,  how  can  we  not  love  the  poor  moujik 
who,  as  Mr.  Graham  tells  us,  goes  off  to  the  "Holy  War" 
without  even  knowing  against  whom?  Why,  before  Mr. 
Graham  was  heard  of  I  had  anticipated  his  tender  sympathy 
for  the  Russian  pilgrims  to  Jerusalem,  and  I  placed  on  the 
stage  the  teaching  of  Russia's  greatest  spirit.  I  might  love 
Russia  even  more,  were  a  Jew  allowed  to  see  her,  but  even 
the  Lord  Chief  Justice,  a  savior  of  the  Russian  financial  situ- 
ation, cannot  enter  Russia  by  simple  virtue  of  his  British  citi- 
zenship. Mr.  Graham  is  trying  to  make  us  love  the  wrong 
Russia — the  Russia  which  he  may  foist  upon  Englishmen 
but  never  upon  the  Russians.  He  has  had  a  mystic  vision 
a  la  Pobedonostsev  of  a  Holy  Russia,  bathed  in  the  light 
that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,  and  it  leads  straight  not  to 
Tolstoy,  but  to  Torquemada.  Such  a  unity  of  Church 
and  State  as  he  holds  is  impossible,  if  only  because  Russia 
has  nearly  twenty  million  Mohammedans.  Mr.  Graham's 


RUSSIA  AND  THE  JEWS  "  413 

reactionary  mysticism  would  not  matter  if  it  stopped  at 
Russia,  where  the  bureaucracy  has  no  need  of  his  services. 
But  he  has  become  a  carrier  of  political  infection  to  England. 
His  new  book  actually  suggests  that  England  should  copy 
the  Russian  constitution — the  constitution  of  the  very 
Empire  whose  primitiveness  the  Pall  Mall  acknowledges. 
England  is  to  refuse  naturalization  to  anyone  unprovided 
with  a  baptismal  certificate!  A  pretty  proposition  for  the 
head  of  the  Empire  of  all  creeds  and  races,  which  has  just 
enlisted  them  all  in  its  fight  for  world-freedom!  Even 
Russia  does  not  go  so  far,  for  her  millions  of  Mussulmans 
are  recognized  as  Russians. 

But  Mr.  Graham  goes  yet  farther  or  still  more  back- 
wards. In  attacking  Bernard  Shaw  he  speaks  of  those  who 
are  "whispering  treason  against  Russia."  Russia  has  then, 
it  seems,  already  annexed  the  British  Empire,  and  British 
citizens  are  capable  of  "treason"  against  her.  Did  I  not 
warn  Mr.  Wells  in  your  columns  that  the  "Liberal  fear  of 
Russia"  was  not  of  her  enmity? 

It  shows  to  what  intellectual  poverty  we  are  come  that 
the  subjective  visions  and  poetic  snapshots  of  our  new 
Sentimental  Journeyer  should  be  hailed  as  heaven-sent 
statesmanship.  "No  book  could  be  better  timed,"  says  the 
Observer.  Well-timed,  indeed.  To  the  British  conscience, 
uneasy  about  Russia,  Mr.  Graham  comes  as  a  providential 
pacifier,  a  soothing  syrup.  Populus  vult  decipi  et  decipitur. 
Not  that  he  is  a  wilful  deceiver.  As  I  told  him  when  I  first 
came  under  the  fascination  of  his  style  and  personality,  he 
is  a  poet  walking  in  a  powder  factory.  Smoking  the  "en- 
chanted cigarettes"  whose  cloud-rings  hide  from  him  the 
real  Russia,  he  does  not  realize  that  he  is  dropping  lighted 
matches  in  the  most  explosive  area  of  Europe. — Yours,  etc., 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL. 

March,  1915. 


THEODOR  HERZL 

Farewell,  O  Prince,  farewell,  O  sorely-tried! 
You  dreamed  a  dream  and  you  have  paid  the  cost: 
To  save  a  people  leaders  must  be  lost, 
By  friends  and  foes  alike  be  crucified. 

Yet  'tis  your  body  only  that  has  died. 
The  noblest  soul  in  Judah  is  not  dust 
But  fire  that  works  in  every  vein — and  must 
Re-shape  our  life,  re-kindling  Israel's  pride. 

So  we  behold  the  captain  of  our  strife: 
Triumphant  in  this  moment  of  eclipse; 
Death  has  but  fixed  him  in  immortal  life. 

His  flag  upheld,  the  trumpet  at  his  lips. 

And  while  we,  weeping,  rend  our  garment's  hem, 

"Next  year,"  we  cry,  "Next  year,  Jerusalem." 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL. 
July  4th,  1904. 


THE  JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE 
SETTLEMENT 

[A  paper  read  before  the  Fabian  Society  on  Dec.  10,  1915.  This 
paper  naturally  overlaps  the  preceding  article  at  a  few  points,  but 
carries  the  story  later.] 


I  feel  honored  by  the  request  of  the  Fabian  Society  to 
contribute  a  paper  on  "The  Jewish  Factor  in  the  War  and 
the  Settlement,"  yet  it  is  scarcely  possible  to  treat  this 
subject  as  straightforwardly  as  doubtless  other  factors 
have  been  treated  by  your  lecturers.  For  while  these  other 
factors  are  plain  and  palpable,  the  Jews — I  have  ventured 
to  assert — do  not  exist:  as  a  political  entity,  that  is.  Nor  is 
this  a  paradox  of  my  own.  You  will  find  it  in  the  Times1 
Atlas.  An  intelligent  Icelander  or  Somali,  studying  a 
stranded  copy  of  it,  would  never  discover  from  it  that  there 
were  such  folk  as  Jews  in  the  world.  On  no  map  would 
he  discover  any  trace  of  a  territory  belonging  to  them, 
while  even  from  the  maps  colored  according  to  religion, 
their  existence  would  be  equally  unsuspected.  Indeed,  the 
only  religious  division  in  which  they  could  possibly  find 
place  would  be  the  light-orange  departments  allotted  to 
"  the  heathen." 

I  am  well  aware  of  the  legend  that  they  not  only  exist 
but  are  a  federation  of  millionaires  darkly  bent  on  subduing 
the  world,  or  at  least  on  pulling  its  strings  in  the  Jewish 
interest.  But  as  I  happen  to  have  been  engaged  for  some 
fifteen  years  in  trying  to  focus  Jewish  forces,  if  only  for 

415 


41 6  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

self-defence,  I  am  in  a  position  to  assure  you  that  this 
legend  is  funnier  than  anything  in  Thackeray's  burlesque 
of  Disraeli. 

The  Jews  are  a  frightened  people:  sixteen  centuries  of 
Christian  love  have  broken  down  their  nerves.  For  the 
persecution  which  began  with  Constantine,  the  founder 
of  State  Christianity,  has  known  scarcely  a  lull.  If  there 
is  any  object  that  could  federate  the  Jewish  millionaires, 
it  would  be  that  of  destroying  such  political  Jewish  power 
as  they  still  apprehend  may  survive  or  be  brought  into 
existence.  And  the  war  has  come  to  co-operate  with  them, 
grinding  the  broken  atoms  of  Jewry  still  smaller,  dashing 
them  one  against  another.  Its  forces  cross  and  cancel 
one  another,  and  their  resultant  is  not  Zion,  but  zero.1 

II 

You  will  now  be  able  to  appraise  at  its  true  value  the 
insinuation  at  present  faint,  but  fated  to  gather  force  and 
frequency  as  all  the  swash-bucklers  who  started  the  war 
become  increasingly  sick  of  it,  that  the  Jewish  factor  in 
the  war  is  nothing  less  than  the  whole  responsibility  for  it; 
that  it  was  an  affair  of  Jewish  financiers  or  wire-pullers 2  or 
perhaps,  as  one  of  my  anonymous  correspondents  explains 
to  me,  a  consequence  of  the  vermin-like  multiplication  of 
the  Jews  in  Germany,  which  unhappy  land  having  thus  no 

1 "  Silence,  consent  and  defence  of  the  wrong  done,  all  make  those  who 
practice  them  accomplices  in  the  sin  which  they  seek  to  shroud  or  excuse." 
(Times,  January  13,  1916.) 

2  The  Dutch  Catholic  paper  Tijd  has  actually  said  that  the  big  Jewish 
bankers  had  induced  the  German  princes  and  Diplomatists  to  go  to  war  to 
acquire  still  more  power  when  Europe  would  become  helpless.  So  too  the 
Clarion  here,  while  the  Times  quotes  a  Viennese  saying  that  the  war  will 
end  when  the  last  Jew  becomes  a  millionaire.  In  truth  it  was  at  the  in- 
spiration of  an  Hungarian  Jewess,  Rourka  Schwimmer,  that  the  Ford  Peace 
Ship  set  out. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND   THE  SETTLEMENT     417 

room  for  its  own  race  was  compelled  to  look  for  "a  place 
in  the  sun."  (The  Jews  of  Germany,  I  may  remark,  are 
less  than  i  per  cent  of  the  population.) 

You  will  now  be  also  in  a  position  to  appreciate  the 
suggestion  of  the  London  Times  that  the  Jews  are  the 
instigators  of  the  Armenian  massacres,1  and  although  the 
journalists  harp  on  Tsar  Ferdinand's  nose  (as  though  it 
were  a  Jew's  harp)  and  a  writer  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
dwells  with  unction  on  "that  somewhat  Judaic  nose  of  the 
Kaiser,  through  which  he  speaks  with  a  distinctly  Judaic 
snuffle,"  you  will  not,  I  imagine,  deduce  that  Jewish  Jes- 
uitry has  set  its  scions  on  the  thrones  of  Bulgaria  and  Ger- 
many in  order  to  destroy  Britain. 

Ill 

The  proposition  that  the  Jews  do  not  exist  requires, 
however,  a  slight  modification.  Though  the  race  has  no 
cohesion  as  a  people,  yet  where  it  exists  in  large  numbers 
it  forms  sub-nationalities,  and  these  do  constitute  political 
entities,  sometimes  exercising,  as  in  Austria,  that  hotch- 
potch of  races,  a  certain  autonomy.  By  far  the  chief  of 
these  sub-nationalities  is  the  Jewry  of  Russia,  recently 
calculated  at  six  millions,  a  population  larger  than  that  of 
Palestine  in  the  days  of  Solomon.  These  Russian  Jews 
are  half  the  Jews  of  the  world  and  almost  the  whole  Jewish 
problem. 

The  Jews  of  England  are  too  few  to  be  regarded  as  a 
sub-nationality,  they  are  merely  a  small  dissenting  sect, 
not  indeed  reaching  half  a  million  in  the  whole  British 
Empire,  including  South  Africa,  where  a  Mark  Twain 

1 A  member  of  an  American  college  at  Constantinople  testifies  that  the 
voice  of  Morgenthau,  the  Jewish  ambassador,  was  the  only  one  raised  for 
mercy.  "  What  he  has  done  for  this  unhappy  people,  single-handed  and 
alone,  is  almost  miraculous." 


418  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

might  be  forgiven  for  saying  he  personally  knew  two  mil- 
lions. Between  all  these  hyphenated  sub-nationalities  and 
localized  sects  there  is  normally  as  much  repulsion  as 
attraction,  but  the  latent  kinship  flames  up  under  the 
persecution  of  any  fraction,  and  the  million  Jews  of  New 
York  who  are  said  to  be  capable  of  swinging  a  Presidential 
election  and  whose  attitude  toward  Russia  resembles  the 
American-Irish  role  in  the  Home  Rule  struggle,  may  be 
regarded  as  a  distinct  factor  in  the  war,  indeed,  the  only 
Jewish  factor;  not  anti-British,  but  certainly  not  pro-ally.1 

1  To  this  and  other  neutral  Jewries,  I  issued  the  following  appeal  in  the 
early  days  of  the  war. 

Although  the  most  monstrous  war  in  human  history  was  "Made  in  Ger- 
many," and  although  Germany's  behavior  in  war  is  as  barbarous  as  her 
temper  in  peace,  I  note  with  regret  that  a  certain  section  of  Jewry  in  America 
and  other  neutral  countries  seems  to  withhold  sympathy  from  Britain  and 
her  Allies.  In  so  far  as  these  Jews  are  German  born,  their  feeling  for  Ger- 
many is  as  intelligible  as  mine  for  England.  But  in  so  far  as  they  are  swayed 
by  consideration  for  the  interests  of  the  Russian  Jews  (to  whom  Germany 
and  Austria  are  offering  equal  rights)  let  me  tell  them  that  it  were  better 
for  the  Jewish  minority  to  continue  to  suffer,  and  that  I  would  far  sooner  lose 
my  own  rights  as  an  English  citizen,  than  that  the  great  interests  of  civiliza- 
tion should  be  submerged  by  the  triumph  of  Prussian  militarism. 

And  hi  saying  this  I  speak  not  as  a  British  patriot  but  as  a  world-patriot, 
dismayed  and  disgusted  by  the  inhuman  ideal  of  the  Gothic  Superman.  I 
am  well  aware  that  Germany's  press  agents  paint  Germany  as  the  guardian 
of  civilization,  an  angel  fighting  desperately  against  hordes  of  savages  im- 
ported from  Africa  and  Asia.  But  if  we  are  using  black  forces  it  is  for  a 
white  purpose;  she  is  using  white  forces  for  a  black  purpose. 

But  is  it  not  even  certain  that  the  Jews  of  Russia  will  continue  to  suffer, 
once  England  is  relieved  from  this  Teutonic  nightmare?  The  assurance  I 
have  been  privileged  to  obtain  from  Sir  Edward  Grey,  that  he  will  neglect 
no  opportunity  of  encouraging  the  emancipation  of  the  Russian  Jews,  marks 
a  turning  point  in  their  history,  replacing  as  it  does  windy  Russian  rumors 
by  a  solid  political  basis  of  hope.  Nor  is  this  the  mere  utterance  of  a  politi- 
cian in  a  crisis.  I  am  in  a  position  to  state  that  it  represents  the  attitude  of 
all  that  is  best  in  English  thought.  It  is  with  confidence,  therefore,  that  I 
appeal  to  American  and  other  "neutral"  Jews  not  to  let  the  shadow  of 
Russia  alienate  their  sympathies  from  the  indomitable  island  which  now, 
as  not  seldom  before,  is  fighting  for  mankind,  and  which  may  yet  civilize 
Russia — and  Germany! 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE   SETTLEMENT     419 

Mr.  Jacob  Schiff,  the  most  powerful  Jew  in  the  States, 
refused  to  touch  the  war-loan  unless  with  a  guarantee — 
which  was  refused — that  no  part  of  the  money  should  go 
to  Russia.  Though  German-born,  he  was  quite  willing 
to  help  England,  but  as  the  financier  of  the  Japanese  war 
against  Russia,  he  refused  to  stultify  himself.1  The  Jewish 
ideal  is  of  course  the  antithesis  of  the  Prussian,  and  it  also 
happens  that  the  Jews  in  the  field,  beginning  with  some 
four  hundred  thousand  Russian  Jews,  are  overwhelmingly 
on  the  side  of  the  allies. 

Yet  it  would  be  false  to  claim  them  as  a  pro-ally  force, 
for  they  have  merely  obeyed  local  patriotism,  slaying  one 
another  at  its  bidding,  and  in  Germany  they  are  the  brain- 
power behind  the  Throne.  One  body,  indeed,  of  Jewish 
soldiers,  the  Zion  Mule  Transport  Corps — recruited  for 
the  British  army  out  of  the  refugees  from  Palestine,  and 
constituting  the  first  Jewish  regiment  since  the  year  133, 
does  represent  an  independent  choice  of  sides,  for  it  was 
inspired  by  faith  in  England,  and  the  hope  that  England, 
the  historic  champion  of  small  peoples,  would  lead  the  Jew 
into  the  Promised  Land.  But  this  Jewish  contribution — 
valuable  as  is  the  service  it  has  rendered  at  the  Dardanelles 
— is  too  small  to  rank  as  a  factor  in  so  mighty  a  war. 


IV 

For  centuries  England  has  been  the  political  hope  of  the 
Jew,  indeed,  the  Holy  Land  of  Europe,  the  cradle  of  liberty, 
the  fount  of  salvation.  How  disconcerting  then  that  in 
this  great  war,  nominally  waged  moreover  for  every  Jewish 

1 A  book  Der  Wdt-Krieg  und  die  Juden  (B.  Segel,  Berlin,  1915)  fiercely 
attacks  me  for  pro-Russianism,  as  do  many  German  Papers,  Professor  Her- 
mann Cohen,  the  distinguished  neo-Kantian  has  also  lectured  against  me  on 
this  same  amusing  ground. 


420  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

ideal,  large  sections  of  neutral  Jewish  opinion  should  bitterly 
desire  the  defeat  of  Britain's  ally,  and,  indeed,  by  journalis- 
tic and  other  imponderable  influences  tend  to  its  downfall. 
To  understand  how  this  hatred  for  Russia  could  overcome 
even  their  love  and  reverence  for  Britain,  and  their  loathing 
for  Prussian  militarism  to  whose  dangers  I  have  tried  to 
arouse  them,  we  must  remember  not  merely  the  pogroms, 
but  what  Mr.  Lucien  Wolf  has  called,  in  the  title  of  his 
invaluable  compilation,  "The  Legal  Sufferings  of  the  Jews 
in  Russia." 

At  the  outbreak  of  the  war  the  Russian  Jews  found  them- 
selves— with  a  few  privileged  exceptions — incarcerated  in  a 
pale  whose  very  villages  were  prohibited  to  them,  debarred 
from  most  offices  of  dignity  in  state  or  army,  and  disallowed 
higher  education  except  for  a  minute  percentage  of  the 
candidates,  chosen — with  a  last  touch  of  diabolical  inge- 
nuity— not  for  their  intellectual  promise  but  by  lot.  In 
1913,  of  3,908  Jewish  students  who  applied  for  admission 
to  the  universities  and  technical  colleges,  162  were  admitted. 
It  was  the  intellectual  starvation  of  a  whole  people.  Pro- 
fessor Dicey,  in  an  introduction  to  Mr.  Wolf's  book,  wrote: 
"The  worst  evil  of  Russian  despotism  is  that  it  threatens 
the  Jewish  subjects  of  the  Tsar  with  moral  degradation. 
.  .  .  The  strange  discussion  of  the  horrible  question  whether 
baptism  shall  save  a  Jew  from  the  disabilities  to  which  he 
is  subject  tells  its  own  tale.  .  .  .  The  persecution  of  Rus- 
sian Jews  is  not  a  matter  which  affects  Russia  alone.  .  .  . 
It  is  assuredly  the  concern  of  every  civilized  State  that  the 
slow  and  laborious  progress  of  mankind  should  suffer  no 
retrogression." 

When  Professor  Dicey  wrote  this  in  1912,  England  was 
not  bound  to  protest  merely  as  a  civilized  State.  She  was 
bound  to  protest  as  a  State  in  semi-alliance  with  Russia. 
But  Sir  Edward  Grey  interpreted  otherwise  the  great  tradi- 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT     421 

tion  in  his  keeping.  "I  cannot  interfere  in  the  internal 
affairs  of  Russia."  That  became  his  formula  and  he  did 
not  budge  from  it,  even  when  he  was  shown  how  Russia 
put  a  slur  on  British  citizenship  by  refusing  British-born 
Jews  the  right  to  enter  Russia.  America  on  this  very 
ground  broke  off  her  commercial  treaty  with  Russia,  but 
England  dared  not  claim  for  her  Lord  Chief  Justice  and 
her  Home  Secretary  those  rights  to  British  protection 
against  injustice  and  wrong,  in  whatever  land  they  might 
be,  which  Palmerston  vindicated  even  for  the  Portuguese 
Jew  of  Gibraltar,  robbed  by  a  mob  at  Athens. 

And  when  the  Entente  was  changed  into  an  Alliance, 
and  England's  responsibility  for  Russia  proportionately 
increased,  Sir  Edward  Grey  still  clung  to  his  formula, 
though  Russia's  internal  affairs  had  clearly  become  Eng- 
land's internal  affairs,  involving  her  and  her  fortunes  in 
the  odium  they  excited.  In  vain,  while  urging  upon  the 
Jews  of  neutral  lands  that  the  issue  was  wider  than  the 
rights  or  wrongs  of  the  Russian  Jews,  I  urged  our  Govern- 
ment to  press  upon  the  Tsar  the  necessity  for  their  instant 
emancipation,  a  measure  the  easier  and  the  more  natural, 
inasmuch  as  they  had  come  into  the  war  with  burning 
enthusiasm,  inexhaustible  sacrifices,  and  incredible  heroism. 
Their  emancipation  would  have  meant  to  the  Allied  cause 
an  immense  asset  of  good  will — the  good  will  of  a  people 
of  journalists. 

But  the  opportunity  was  let  slip,  though  it  was  a  war 
for  righteousness  and  the  freedom  of  small  nationalities, 
and  though  even  a  Russian  Senator — Baron  Rosen,  formerly 
Ambassador  at  Washington — cried  out  in  the  Imperial 
Council:  "It  is  impossible  simultaneously  to  serve  two 
gods — it  is  impossible  to  profess  as  regards  international 
relations  the  great  principles  of  liberty  and  justice  and  to 
ignore  them  as  regards  inner  affairs.  This  would  be  un- 


422  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

paralleled  political  hypocrisy  and  cynicism."  But  was 
there  at  least  an  alleviation — for  war  time  only — of  "the 
legal  sufferings  of  the  Jews  of  Russia?"  Surely  Russia 
was  touched  by  their  Jewish  patriotism.  They  were  the 
sole  nationality  from  which  only-sons  were  conscripted 
and  they  bore  it  without  a  murmur;  they  even  added  volun- 
teers— they  came  back  from  America  itself.  Their  wealthier 
classes  poured  out  funds,  they  organized  hospitals.  Surely 
Russia — the  land,  as  Stephen  Graham  tells  us,  of  pure 
primitive  Christianity — could  not  but  respond  to  this 
supreme  example  of  Christian  forgiveness! 

How  Russia  responded  you  shall  now  hear.  And  though 
a  stream  of  documents  has  poured  upon  me  from  Russian 
Jewry,  it  is  not  their  evidence  that  I  shall  call,  though  it 
is  naturally  nearest  to  the  facts.  I  will  go  only  to  the 
speeches  in  the  Duma,  published  in  the  Russian  papers, 
neither  censored  by  the  Russian  Government,  nor  con- 
tradicted by  it: 


"Under  the  mask  of  military  requirement,"  said  Professor 
Milyukoff ,  the  celebrated  leader  of  the  Cadet  Party  (Consti- 
tutional Democrats),  "unheard-of  measures  of  corporate 
responsibility  for  uncommitted  crimes  were  adopted  against 
the  Jews — measures  reminding  one  of  the  savage  laws  of 
the  Dark  Ages,  and  degrading  us  in  the  eyes  of  the  civilized 
world."  "The  Jews,"  said  A.  F.  Kerenski  (Labor  party), 
"have  been  crucified  by  hatred  and  calumny."  "A  series 
of  measures,"  cried  Friedman  (the  Jewish  Deputy),  "ab- 
solutely incredible  and  unheard  of  in  the  history  of  hu- 
manity, whether  for  their  cruelty  or  their  pretext." 

What  was  this  pretext?  Let  Tschkheidze,  the  leader 
of  the  Socialist  Democrats,  answer — and  answer  it.  "Gen- 
tlemen," he  said  in  the  Duma  on  the  i6th  of  August,  1915, 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE   SETTLEMENT     423 

"the  Government,  once  more  on  its  last  legs,  turns  again 
for  a  scapegoat  to  the  Jews.  This  tune  instead  of  a  charge 
of  ritual  murder,  it  is  the  accusation  of  felony  and  treachery. 
But  all  Russia  and  all  Europe  know  what  has  happened 
behind  the  armies  and  on  the  battlefields.  The  guilty  are 
not  the  Jews — the  whole  country  knows  that.  The  guilty 
are  the  traitors — some  of  them  recently  in  high  office,  some 
of  them  now  hanged — who  have  battened  on  official  con- 
tracts." 1 

And  what  were  the  measures  to  repress  the  innocent 
Jews?  One  was,  like  the  Germans  in  Belgium — to  take 
hostages,  but,  unlike  the  Germans,  from  their  own  subjects. 
Four  hundred  of  the  Jewish  elders  were  thrown  into  prison — 
the  punishment,  as  a  Christian  critic  put  it  in  the  Duma, 
of  enjoying  public  respect.  But  the  main  measure,  as 
transpires  from  all  the  Duma  speeches,  consisted  or  con- 
sists— for  it  has  not  yet  quite  ceased — in  driving  out  whole 
populations  at  a  few  hours'  notice  from  their  homes  and 
possessions;  hi  turning  some  six  hundred  thousand  Jews 
into  vagabonds  and  mendicants.  The  sick,  including 
women  in  child-birth  and  cases  of  contagious  disease,  were 
dragged  from  their  beds,  the  orphans  from  the  asylums, 
the  lunatics  from  the  madhouses,  and  such  as  could  be 
packed  in  any  goods  trucks  available  were  sent  off  without 
food  or  water  with  letters  of  consignment  like  goods;  the 
others,  men,  women  and  children,  had  to  go  afoot  through 
the  wintry  roads. 

If  a  baby  died  on  the  way,  the  parents  could  not  stop 
to  bury  it;  if  the  scarlatina  or  typhus  patients  died  in  the 
train,  the  bodies  were  not  removed.  Dzioubinski,  the 

1  These  were  named  by  the  Chairman  of  the  Army  and  Navy  Commis- 
sion in  the  Duma  on  March  2ist,  and  included  Sukhomlinov,  the  former 
War  Minister,  and  General  Grogoryev,  who  surrendered  the  fortress  of 
Kovno. 


424  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

peasant  deputy,  told  the  Duma  of  an  evacuation  of  Jews 
which  he  had  himself  witnessed  in  the  Government  of 
Radom.  "At  eleven  o'clock  at  night,"  so  ran  his  descrip- 
tion, "the  whole  Jewish  population  was  suddenly  exiled. 
Whoever  was  found  at  daybreak  would  be  hanged.  In 
the  darkness  of  the  night  began  the  exodus  to  the  nearest 
city,  thirty  versts  (that  is  twenty  miles)  distant.  There 
was  no  means  of  transport.  The  old,  the  sick,  the  paralytic, 
were  carried  by  the  others." 

A  letter  was  read  in  the  Duma  from  a  young  American 
Jew  who  had  emigrated  from  Russia  ten  years  before  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  leaving  his  folks  still  there.  When  war 
broke  out  he  risked  his  life  in  returning  to  Russia  via  Ar- 
changel to  enlist,  because,  he  wrote,  "I  love  the  land  of 
my  birth  more  than  my  life,  more  than  the  liberty  I  enjoyed 
in  America.  ...  In  the  Carpathians  I  lost  my  right  arm, 
almost  up  to  the  shoulder,  and  was  invalided  home.  On 
my  way  I  met,  quite  by  chance,  at  a  railway  station  my 
mother  and  my  family,  expelled  from  our  native  place. 
This  tragedy  broke  me  up  again,  and  I  am  now  in  the  mili- 
tary hospital  of  Riga.  .  .  .  Tell  the  gentlemen  of  the  Right," 
he  wound  up,  "that  I  do  not  regret  the  arm  I  have  lost. 
What  I  regret  is  the  human  dignity  I  enjoyed  on  the  foreign 
soil  of  America." 

"Gentlemen,"  cried  the  Leader  of  the  Social  Democrats, 
in  a  burst  of  irrepressible  indignation,  "it  is  now  a  year 
that  we  are  being  told  that  this  shambles,  this  ocean  of 
blood,  is  in  the  name  of  law,  truth  and  justice,  in  the  name 
of  the  highest  principles  of  freedom,  equality  and  fraternity. 
If  so,  let  me  ask  the  government  a  few  questions.  Under 
what  law  is  a  whole  people  made  to  answer  for  the  crimes — 
let  us  assume  they  are  the  heaviest  crimes — of  some  of  its 
members?  What  kind  of  truth  is  it  when  lying  communica- 
tions are  being  fabricated  and  published  in  the  official 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      425 

organ  of  the  government,  that  the  Jews  of  Kuzhi  have 
betrayed  the  Russian  soldiers  to  the  enemy?  Why  have 
the  various  periodical  publications  been  ordered  to  publish 
this  lie  under  threat  of  penalties?  What  justice  is  this 
that  requires  that  a  Jewish  volunteer,  who  has  been  several 
times  in  battle,  and  is  now  crippled  and  mutilated,  shall 
be  expelled  within  twenty-four  hours  from  places  in  Russia 
where  he  was  looking  for  employment? 

"What  humanity  is  this  which  forbids  the  offering  of 
food  to  hungry  Jewish  fugitives  immured  in  sealed  wagons 
at  the  stations?  What  freedom  is  this  to  have  the  whole 
Jewish  press  suppressed  and  destroyed  by  a  single  stroke 
of  the  pen?  What  fraternity  is  this  when  a  part  of  the  army 
is  incited  against  the  Jewish  soldiers  who  are  risking  their 
lives  in  the  same  trenches  side  by  side  with  the  others? 
The  Germans  are  accused  of  violating  the  accepted  rules 
of  war  .  .  .  but,  gentlemen,  in  the  name  of  what  code  of 
law  are  orders  issued  to  the  Russian  Army  to  drive  the 
peaceful  Jewish  population  forward  under  the  fire  of  the 
enemy's  bullets?  By  virtue  of  what  code  are  Jewish  sub- 
jects of  Russia  being  taken  as  hostages  and  thrown  into 
prison,  in  order  to  subject  them  to  torture  and  to  have 
them  shot?  The  Germans  are  being  branded  for  not  having 
spared  Rheims  Cathedral.  But  let  me  ask  you  what  ethical 
or  aesthetic  principle  underlies  the  outraging  of  a  Jewish 
woman  within  the  precincts  of  the  synagogue  whither  she 
had  fled  in  the  hope  of  escaping  her  terrible  fate?  " 

Such  have  been  the  "legal"  sufferings  of  the  Jews  in 
Russia  in  war-time — the  mere  military  measures.  I  have 
omitted,  you  will  remember,  the  facts  furnished  by  my 
Jewish  informants.  I  have  not  repeated  a  syllable  which 
Russia  has  censored.  Nor  have  I  referred  to  the  horrors 
of  the  actual  warfare;  the  fact  that  the  Jewish  Pale  was 
the  very  heart  of  the  war-zone,  bombarded  and  pillaged 


426  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

by  both  belligerents,  taken  and  re-taken,  its  miserable  in- 
habitants shot  and  hanged  as  spies  by  each  side  in  turn. 
I  have  not  recalled  to  you  the  myriads  of  orphans  and 
widows  created  legitimately  on  the  battlefields. 

A  friend  of  mine,  a  neutral,  relates  that  in  Switzerland 
he  met  a  Jew  from  Russia  who,  having  seen  all  these  things, 
sits  in  his  room  all  day  long  writing  appeals  to  the  rulers  and 
potentates  of  the  nations,  begging  them  to  make  an  end 
of  the  sufferings  of  the  Jews.  You  perceive  that  he  is  mad. 

But  I  should  be  giving  you  a  false  perspective  if  I  failed 
to  point  out  that  the  Jews,  though  the  worst,  are  not  the 
only  victims  of  the  Russian  bureaucracy.  The  opportunity 
of  the  war  was  taken — not  to  fuse  all  sects  and  races  in  the 
glow  of  their  patriotism.  On  the  contrary,  every  religious 
and  racial  minority  was  oppressed  in  turn.  Listen  to  the 
Moslem  Deputy  in  the  Duma.  "  Wholesale  expulsions 
of  the  male  population,  violation  of  the  unprotected  women 
left  behind,  ruined  and  devastated  villages,  an  impoverished, 
hungry,  terror-stricken  and  unprovided  for  population, 
this  is  the  position,  of  the  Moslems  in  the  Caucasus." 
Listen  to  the  Lithuanian  Deputy.  "Whole  territories, 
with  millions  of  inhabitants  are  given  over  to  fire  and  sword. 
The  whole  population  is  driven  out,  the  country  laid  waste, 
the  people  turned  into  beggars."  Listen  to  the  Polish 
Deputy.  "The  population  was  driven  in  front,  the  cattle 
requisitioned,  the  country  devastated."  And  the  Letts  will 
tell  you  of  similar  persecution,  and  the  Ruthenians  of  the 
persecutions  of  their  Press  and  their  religion;  and  the  Finns 
of  further  encroachments  on  their  constitution,  and  the 
Russian  people  generally  of  Trade  Unions  rooted  out  and 
the  press  strangled. 

"What  will  they  say  in  France,  our  great  democratic 
Ally?"  thundered  a  Russian  orator  at  the  Duma.  "What 
will  they  say  in  liberty-loving  England?  " 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE   SETTLEMENT     427 

Liberty-loving  England!  Blindfolded  England,  whose 
heroic  sons  have  offered  their  lives  for  righteousness,  but 
whose  able  editors  and  governors  have  sent  them  to  death 
with  their  eyes  bandaged. 

"Unparalleled  political  hypocrisy  and  cynicism!"  I 
thank  thee,  Russ,  for  teaching  me  that  word.  Pliny  tells 
us  that  after  the  death  of  Domitian  the  Romans  flocked 
to  hear  the  orators  recounting  the  tales  of  the  tyrant's 
victims  but  that  they  could  hardly  bear  to  listen  for  sheer 
shame  at  their  own  passive  complicity  in  his  crimes.  I 
believe  it  is  with  a  similar  feeling  that  Englishmen  will  one 
day  hear  what  has  been  going  on  in  this  war.  For  we  are 
living  through  one  of  those  periods  described  by  Mommsen 
when  words  no  longer  correspond  to  things. 

Bismarck  said  that  the  Germans  feared  God  and  had 
no  other  fear.  Sir  Edward  Grey  feared  Russia  and  had 
no  fear  for  England's  dishonor.  I  do  not  say  he  has  not 
made  protests.  He  has — but  tepid,  timorous.  So  far, 
England  is  the  only  country  that  the  Steam  Roller  has 
crushed. 

VI 

"The  fear  of  God/'  says  the  Bible— that  somewhat  dis- 
credited work — "is  the  beginning  of  wisdom."  But  has 
the  fear  of  Russia  been  really  the  beginning  of  wisdom? 
Let  the  whilom  Russian  Ambassador  at  Washington  speak 
again.  "It  is  inconceivable, "  he  told  the  Imperial  Council 
this  September,  "that  those  who  guide  our  home  policy 
should  not  be  able  to  realize  that  by  our  mediaeval  treat- 
ment of  the  Jewish  population  of  Russia,  and  by  our  sys- 
tematic outrages  upon  the  constitutional  habit  of  mind 
of  the  Finnish  people  we  are  helping  enormously  the  pro- 
German  propaganda  in  neutral  countries  which  our  enemies 
carry  on  with  lavish  means  to  the  detriment  of  the  cause 


428  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

of  the  Allies!"  Yes,  indeed,  these  things  of  which  we  are 
not  permitted  a  whisper  here,  lose  nothing,  we  may  be  sure, 
heard  through  the  German  megaphone.  And  then  we 
wonder  that  the  Bryce  report  on  Belgium  leaves  the  Swedes 
or  Roumanians  comparatively  cold,  and  Professor  Wilson 
and  the  Pope  are  not  as  furiously  British  as  Mr.  Blatchford. 
Vain  to  expect  these  atrocities  on  enemies  to  move  the 
neutrals  when  Russia  has  provided  such  an  antidote  in 
the  shape  of  atrocities  on  her  own  subjects.  In  the  recent 
debate  on  the  alleged  indiscretions  of  the  Times  Ministers 
made  great  play  with  the  importance  of  influencing  neu- 
trals. Yet  this  is  how  they  have  influenced  them. 

I  said  Sir  Edward  Grey  had  made  protests — but  as  a 
favor  to  the  Jews,  crumbs  thrown  to  a  beggar.    He  has  not 
apparently  understood  the  importance  to  England  of  Liber- 
alizing Russia.     It  is  not  only  that  the  national  unity  so 
necessary  to  peaceful  warfare  was  shattered  from  within, 
Russia's  will  to  victory  enfeebled.     All  these  oppressed 
minorities  of  religion  and  race  have — like  the  Jews,  brethren 
in  "other  lands,1  and  some — like  the  Moslem — infinitely 
more  powerful  brethren  than  the  Jews.    What  of  the  Holy 
War  which  Germany  had  not  succeeded  in  kindling?    What 
of  the  reverberation  in  India  with  its  sixty-two  millions 
of  Mussulmans? 

And  when  a  portion  of  the  Ukrainian  population  whose 
newspapers  have  been  suppressed  and  whose  religion  op- 
pressed, finds  itself  captured  by  the  Germans,  what — asked 
Milyukoff — must  be  the  effect  on  their  brethren  living 
on  the  still  Russian  side  of  the  frontier,  when  they  see  the 
new  free  Ukrainian  literature  springing  up  under  the  wily 
conquerors?  Will  they  in  fact  not  pray  likewise  to  come 
under  "Prussian  militarism?"  And  the  conquered  Galician 

I 1  had  sent  me  a  Spanish  Journal  of  Rosario  (Argentine)  with  an  article 
on  the  Persecution  of  the  Jews  in  Russia  and  the  Duma  Speeches. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE   WAR  AND  THE   SETTLEMENT      429 

Poles — the  Catholics — were  they  likely  to  remain  content 
with  the  promise  of  the  resurrection  of  Poland  when  the 
first  fruit  of  Russian  rule  was  the  proclamation  of  the 
Greek  Church  as  the  established  religion?  And  the  com- 
mercial classes  half-ruined  by  the  expulsion  of  the  Jews, 
how  can  they  continue  to  finance  the  war?  And  the  de- 
populated zones,  how  can  they  feed  the  army?  And  the 
goods  the  Jews  are  compelled  to  leave  behind — may  they  not 
ultimately  increase  the  German  war-store?  And  the  trains 
so  badly  wanted  for  the  transport  of  munitions — why 
must  a  train  with  one  hundred  and  ten  trucksful  of  Jews, 
living  or  dead,  be  kept  waiting  two  days  in  a  siding? 
All  these  questions  you  will  find  in  the  Duma  debates, 
together  with  the  significant  remark  of  Dzioubinski  that 
the  military  authorities  direct  a  mass  of  energy  towards 
politics, — and  that  bad  politics, — instead  of  towards  their 
legitimate  goal.  But  in  the  language  of  a  distinguished 
Russian,  an  army  that  makes  politics  cannot  make  war. 

"What  will  they  say  in  England?"  But,  you  see,  poor 
fog-bound  England  knew  nothing  of  these  doings.  While 
all  that  was  best  in  Russia  was  proud  of  the  Alliance  with 
the  Mother  of  Parliaments,  and  was  yearning  for  an  en- 
couraging word  of  comradeship  from  the  countrymen  of 
Byron  in  the  common  fight  for  freedom  and  progress,1 
nothing  has  reached  Russia  from  England  save  a  chorus  of 
adulation  capped  by  Stephen  Graham's  sentimental  glori- 
fications of  the  old  order — effusions  which  have  been  de- 
nounced by  the  intelligentsia  and  leading  Russian  news- 
papers as  a  systematic  misleading  of  the  British  people. 
Can  we  wonder  if  millions  of  Russians  of  all  sects  and 

1  Interview  with  Miliukoff  (Daily  Chronicle,  March  i,  1916):  "You  would 
not  offend  the  Russian  people,  you  would  not  even  offend  the  best  men  in 
the  Government,  if  your  papers  applauded  these  ideas  and  expressed  sym- 
pathy with  those  who  are  working  in  Russia  for  their  fulfilment." 


430  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

races  begin  to  see  hope  for  Russia  only  in  the  defeat  of 
Russia?  I  tried  to  arouse  England  to  the  danger  to  the 
common  cause,  I  explained  orally  to  the  Foreign  Office 
why  the  Steam  Roller  was  in  retreat,  and  I  tried  to  explain 
to  Englishmen  at  large  why  it  was  essential  to  victory  that 
they  should  rally  by  an  expression  of  sympathy  the  faint- 
ing energies  of  Russian  Liberalism.  But  the  great  Liberal 
organs  and  magazines  had  established  a  self-denying  ordi- 
nance, and  when  at  last  the  Daily  Chronicle  put  my  patriotic 
article  in  type,  every  word  of  it  was  blue-pencilled  by  a 
pro-German  censor.1 

VII 

Mr.  Brailsford,  in  a  brilliant  chapter,  has  pointed  out  that, 
through  the  necessities  of  modern  political  grouping,  na- 
tions no  longer  retain  their  full  sovereign  rights  and  that, 
therefore,  they  may  the  less  reluctantly  pass  over  the  future 
World-State.  That  thought  is  at  once  an  explanation,  a 
consolation,  and  a  warning.  England  is  literally  not  her- 
self. She  is  Russia,  France,  Italy,  Serbia,  even  Japan. 
I  have  urged  upon  the  neutral  Jew  to  trust  in  the  influence 
of  France  and  England  upon  Russia.  So  far,  however, 
it  appears  that  liberty,  like  water,  seeks  its  lowest  level. 
And  the  moral  is — what  Professor  Dicey  felt  by  instinct — 
that  the  world  must  be  treated  as  a  whole,  since  any 

1  According  to  the  Times,  February  28,  1916,  the  Labor  Party  in  Russia 
declares  that  its  opposition  to  the  Government  is  based  mainly  on  its  in- 
sistence that  the  Government's  activities  during  the  last  five  months  are 
incompatible  with  the  interests  of  national  defence  and  of  the  country.  The 
Constitutional  Democratic  Congress  in  a  manifesto  says:  The  task  of  re- 
pulsing the  foe  is  inseparably  connected  with  the  task  of  our  internal  con- 
struction. 

At  the  luncheon  to  the  Russian  journalists,  Mons.  V.  Nabokoff  clearly 
characterized  the  upper  class  anti-democrats  as  down  on  their  knees  before 
their  supreme  idol,  the  Prussian  mailed  fist.  (Times,  March  7, 1916.) 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      431 

nation,  however  ignoble,  or  even  any  tribe  however  savage, 
may  now  become  the  ally  and  alloy  of  any  nation,  however 
noble.  It  is  clear  that  advanced  peoples  can  no  longer 
maintain  their  freedom  and  ideals,  nor  the  gains  of  civili- 
zation be  regarded  as  secure,  till  the  whole  world  is  lifted 
to  the  same  level. 

Thus,  it  is  not  as  a  Jew  that  I  stand  here  asking  for  jus- 
tice. Both  our  ideal  interests  as  Englishmen  and  our 
practical  interests  as  belligerents  demand  the  immediate 
emancipation  of  the  Russian  Jew,  as  of  every  other  op- 
pressed nationality  in  the  Russian  Empire.  It  cannot  be 
postponed  till  the  Settlement,  for  it  is  a  war-need  even  more 
than  a  peace-need.  It  will  help  to  win  the  war.  Why  is 
national  unity  less  vital  to  Russia  than  to  England  and 
France?  Why  have  the  Allies  who  finance  her  so  lavishly 
not  demanded  a  Coalition  Government? 

But  while  Sir  Edward  Grey  has  been  shivering  before 
Russia,  the  Russo- Jewish  problem  like  the  Ukrainian  prob- 
lem, and  the  Polish  problem,  has  partially  solved  itself 
pro  tern,  at  least.  A  third  of  the  prisoners  of  the  Pale  have 
been  annexed  by  Germany,  and  they  have  already  equal 
rights  and  education.1  The  lovers  of  liberty  who  rhap- 
sodized over  Russia's  promise  of  an  independent  Poland 
are  now  trembling  lest  the  Kaiser  carry  it  out. 

1  The  Germans,  two  and  one-half  months  after  taking  Warsaw,  opened  the 
long-denied  Polish  University.  There  are  two  Jewish  professors.  The  Muni- 
cipal affairs  of  Brilystock  are  managed  by  a  Citizens'  Committee,  four  Poles, 
four  Jews,  and  a  German  chairman.  The  Germans  have  opened  Yiddish 
schools  and  issued  a  Yiddish  newspaper  under  title  of  Official  Gazette.  There 
is,  however,  terrible  poverty,  50,000  Jews  eating  daily  in  Warsaw  at  the  Soup 
Kitchen  (many  are  beggars).  The  German  Governor  of  Poland,  Von  Puttka- 
mer,  says  that  the  conditions  in  many  parts  seem  revolting,  and  that  although 
the  Jews  have  collected  two  and  one-half  million  roubles  towards  the  general 
charity  fund  of  11,000,000  roubles,  they  have  only  been  given  150,000  by  the 
Poles.  "The  Jews  are  afraid  of  the  Poles,  and  have  no  confidence  in  the 
German  Government,"  he  sums  up.  Germany  proper  is  already  agitated 
by  the  fear  of  large  Jewish  immigration  from  its  new  provinces. 


432  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

In  that  case,  however,  the  Galician  Jews  might  be  worse 
off  than  before.  For  in  the  very  midst  of  their  paeans  of 
Liberty  and  their  denunciations  of  the  Russian  tyrant, 
the  Poles  were  contemplating  the  refusal  of  equal  rights 
to  the  two  million  Jews  against  whom  they  had  been  carry- 
ing on  a  bitter  boycott.  These  beggars  were  not  yet  on 
horseback  before  they  saw  the  hooves  of  their  steeds  tramp- 
ling on  poorer  devils.  As  you  have  had  a  lecture  on  Poland, 
you  will  be  aware  that  the  old  Poland  of  1772  embraced, 
besides  Poles  proper,  the  Lithuanians  and  the  Letts, 
peoples  not  of  Slav  but  of  Baltic  origin  who  now  clamor 
for  separate  nationality,  and  the  White-Russians  and 
Ukrainians  or  Ruthenians,  whose  differentia  is  religious. 
But  the  dream  of  Poland  is  to  rule  over  them  all.1 

Big  folk  have  little  folk  upon  whose  rights  to  trample; 
Little  folk  have  lesser  folk  and  follow  the  example. 

Even  Sienkiewicz  who  appealed  to  the  conscience  of  the 
world  on  behalf  of  the  Poles  in  Prussia  has  omitted  to 
protest  against  the  boycott  of  the  Jews  by  his  own 
countrymen. 

VIII 

A  critic  in  a  French  magazine,  reviewing  some  Ghetto 
stories,  remarked  that  reading  them  was  like  seeing  the 
bay,  on  whose  shore  he  lived,  from  the  opposite  curve, 
so  that  all  his  familiar  landmarks  were  reversed  or  revealed 
under  a  new  aspect.  Thus,  his  own  people,  so  serenely  con- 

xThe  Germans  freed  from  Napoleon,  crushed  down  Danes  and  Poles. 
Despite  the  liberty-lauding  oratory  of  Kossuth,  the  Magyars  now  crush 
down  Slovaks,  Ruthenes  and  Roumanians.  The  treatment  of  the  Jews  by 
the  Roumanians  is  a  by-word.  Finland  oppresses  the  Jews  and  parodies  the 
Russian  Pole.  Among  the  Jews  the  Zionist  majority  crushed  the  minority. 
There  has  never  yet  been  a  fight  for  Liberty — only  for  one's  own  liberty, 
Even  the  Montenegrins,  Tennyson's  "rough  rock  throne  of  Freedom"  have 
monstrously  persecuted  the  Catholic  Albanians. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT     433 

scious  of  their  centralism  were  turned  into  "the  heathen," 
while  their  religion,  the  last  word  of  sweetness  and  light, 
now  appeared  as  a  synonym  for  hatred  and  darkness. 
To-day,  a  Ghetto  story,  especially  if  laid  in  the  Russo- 
Polish  Pale,  would  reveal  the  war  for  righteousness  as  an 
incomprehensible  nightmare  in  which  the  Jew,  fervent  to 
pour  out  his  blood  and  his  treasure  for  Russia,  finds  himself 
hounded  and  tortured  between  the  separate  hates  of  the 
Russian  and  the  Pole  and  only  saved  by  the  conquering 
Kaiser,  bringing,  like  Napoleon,  equal  rights  for  all  races. 
Even  in  England  the  Jew  who  won  the  Victoria  Cross  and 
was  refused  a  meal  in  a  restaurant  in  one  of  our  greatest 
liberal  centres,  in  Leeds 1  to  be  precise,  must  have  been 
somewhat  bemused,  the  more  so  as  he  himself  makes 
speeches  on  the  Asquith  model. 

The  angle  at  which  the  Jew  sees  the  war  can  thus  rarely 
be  what  the  Censorship  Bureau  would  consider  a  right 
angle — it  is  either  too  obtuse  or  too  acute.  A  Christian 
Gunner — if  that  is  not  an  Irish  bull — wrote  to  the  Yorkshire 
Evening  Post:  "I  am  a  Britisher,  home  on  seven  days' 
leave,  after  being  out  in  France  for  fifteen  months.  .  .  . 
What  has  surprised  me  as  much  as  anything  in  this  war  of 
surprises  is  the  great  number  of  Jewish  boys  who  are  doing 
their  bit  at  the  front  and  doing  it  right.  Most  of  them  have 
enlisted  under  wrong  names,  hiding  their  proper  names 
under  English  ones.  Some  of  my  best  pals  at  the  front  are 
Jews,  whom  anyone  would  welcome  as  pals  and  who  are 
true  as  steel." 

That  the  Christian  Gunner  is  not  exaggerating,  let  the 
story  of  Private  Sam  Thomson  illustrate — the  young  sig- 
naller of  the  Camerons  who,  in  a  house  at  Loos,  killed  single- 

1 A  town  where  a  Mrs.  A.  Levy  has  six  sons  at  the  front,  two  wounded  at 
Neuve  Chapelle,  and  an  old  boy  of  which — Harry  Grows — came  all  the  way 
from  Boston,  U.  S.  A.,  to  enlist. 


434  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

handed  three  Germans  and  captured  thirty,  and  whose 
real  name  was  Sam  Woolf.  Sam  was  anxious  to  give  his 
all  for  England,  yet  he  felt  it  necessary  to  smuggle  himself 
into  her  army.  And  it  is  a  sad  fact  that  despite  the  resound- 
ing cry  for  recruits,  Jews  have  been  frequently  refused  or, 
accepted,  "chipped,"  as  it  is  called,  by  their  comrades. 
It  is  the  same  in  the  French  trenches,  where  the  Jewish 
volunteers  of  the  French  Foreign  Legion  are  accused  of 
enlisting  for  the  food.  Even  a  Jewish  officer  in  an  Eng- 
lish regiment  who  gave  up  the  bar  to  enlist  found  life  almost 
unbearable. 

And  if  this  is  so  in  free  democracies,  what  must  be  the 
situation  in  Russia,  where  even  the  law  is  on  the  side  of 
the  mob;  what  must  have  been  the  patriotism  of  those 
persecuted  French  Volunteers  who  being  shot  as  mutineers 
for  demanding  to  be  removed  to  another  regiment,  faced 
the  firing  squad  with  unbandaged  eyes,  crying:  "Vive 
la  France!  Vive  la  Russie!"  Surely  Jews  are  the  only 
Christians  nowadays. 

IX 

So  much  for  the  Jewish  factor  in  the  war.  It  has  re- 
peated you  see,  the  sufferings  and  heroism  of  Belgium,  but 
without  its  glories  and  without  its  hopes.  The  notion  that 
after  the  war  the  world  will  be  righteously  re-arranged  and 
Sir  Edward  Grey  will  wipe  away  the  tears  from  off  all 
faces,  has  already  been  dissipated  by  his  bribes — rejected 
or  accepted,  to  Bulgaria,  Greece,  and  Italy.  The  war  has 
degenerated — under  pressure  of  necessity — into  an  old- 
fashioned  affair  of  spoils  and  rewards.  It  is  true  that 
President  Wilson  has  announced  that  at  the  Peace  Settle- 
ment he  will  press  for  equal  rights  for  the  Russian  and 
Roumanian  Jews  but  I  do  not  know  that  he  will  be  asked 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT     435 

to  the  Conference.  It  is  true  that  the  Berlin  Congress  of 
1878  accorded  equal  rights  to  the  Jews  of  Roumania  but 
this  Jewish  clause  has  been  left  by  all  the  guaranteeing 
Powers,  England  included,  "a  scrap  of  paper." 

The  Fabians  are  accustomed  to  make  large  constructive 
demands  upon  Christendom,  and  you  harbor  more  than 
one  speculative  sociologist,  who  baits  and  badgers  our 
poor  humanity  with  demands  for  a  radical  reconstruction 
of  its  ways  of  living,  thinking  and  even  feeling:  a  revalua- 
tion of  all  values.  My  own  demand  upon  Christendom  has 
been  precisely  the  opposite — I  have  asked  it  only  to  carry 
out  its  most  conventional  doctrines.  I  have  not  even  asked 
for  Christianity,  only  for  the  pre-Christian  virtues:  justice, 
kindness,  fair-play.  Perhaps  my  demand  was  the  more 
revolutionary  of  the  two:  at  any  rate  it  has  been  no  more 
successful. 

There  are  indeed  signs  that  after  the  war  the  long  agony 
of  the  Russian  Jew  will  find  alleviation — but  it  will  not  be 
through  the  action  of  Christians  or  of  statesmen.  What  is 
bringing  about  the  emancipation  of  Russian  Jewry  is  not 
the  pale  God  of  Galilee,  but  Mammon  and  Mars.  The  very 
expulsions  of  the  war,  the  congestions  of  refugees,  have 
broken  down  the  pale  and  created  a  new  order,  which  can 
never  quite  return  to  the  old,  though  the  "Black  Hun- 
dreds" and  the  "True  Russians"  (or  "True  Prussians"  as 
they  are  now  called  in  Russia),  are  moving  hell  and  earth 
to  bring  back  yesterday.  And  at  the  moment  they  have 
almost  succeeded. 

The  most  reactionary  parties  are  in  power,  Liberal 
Groups  and  even  Moderates  have  been  baffled,  the  Duma 
has  been  indefinitely  closed,  the  manoeuvre  (already  exposed 
in  that  assembly) ,  of  egging  on  the  Christian  soldiers  against 
their  Jewish  comrades  exploited  afresh  with  a  diabolical 
cunning  that  perceives  that  in  the  Jewish  valor  and  manifold 


436  THE   WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

military  distinctions,  with  the  80,000  Jewish  casualties  al- 
ready known,  lie  the  collapse  of  the  whole  "True  Russian" 
case. 

Secret  orders  have  been  issued  to  the  commanders  to 
report  on  the  behavior  of  the  Jewish  soldiers,  i.  e.,  of  course, 
on  their  misbehavior,  with  a  view  to  excluding  Jews  from 
the  army  altogether  after  the  war.  With  a  strange  hash  of 
war  and  politics,  army  orders  arraign  the  slackness  of  the 
Jewish  soldiers  who  yet  dare  to  demand  equal  rights;  their 
Jewish- German  speech  is  proclaimed  the  obvious  channel  of 
communication  with  the  enemy  and  this  though  every 
attempt  to  establish  charges  of  treachery  and  espionage  has 
broken  down.  Hence  an  intolerable  situation  for  the  Jewish 
soldiers  on  all  the  fronts,  friction  with,  sometimes  assassina- 
tion by,  their  comrades;  to  the  weakening  of  the  Russian 
army  and  the  Allied  cause;  and  in  Jewish  towns  renewed 
plunderings  and  burnings  of  houses,  blood-ritual  charges, 
pogroms,  expulsions,  violations  of  women.1 


And  yet  I  do  not  despair.  For  all  the  intelligent  classes  in 
Russia  have  now  discovered  that  in  the  Jews  Russia  pos- 
sesses a  commercial  asset  more  valuable  than  all  her  oil- 
wells,  and  if  the  Germans  are  not  to  come  back,  the  Jews 

1  According  to  an  interpellation  in  the  Duma  the  Moscow  police  recently 
carried  out  an  anti-Semitic  raid.  (Times,  March  n,  1916.)  The  latest  of 
these  incendiary  documents — a  recent  circular  accusing  Jews  of  fomenting 
strikes  and  revolutions  and  buying  up  coin — was  exposed  recently  in  the 
Duma  and  published  in  the  Sunday  Times.  It  led  to  looting  at  Baku,  di- 
rectly incited  by  the  police.  The  situation  at  the  moment  of  going  to  press 
is  very  black,  and  even  in  the  Duma  the  Pro- Jewish  Block  has  been  half- 
shattered.  It  may  be  here  recalled  that  General  Freynoht,  the  unjust  judge 
in  the  Kishineff  pogrom  trial,  has  been  now  sentenced  to  penal  servitude 
for  life  for  high  treason,  while  his  colleague  Colonel  Miassoiedoff  has  been 
hanged. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE   WAR  AND  THE   SETTLEMENT      437 

must  be  given  a  free  hand — and  a  free  foot — in  developing 
Russia  for  the  commonwealth.  I  may  regret,  as  much  as 
Stephen  Graham,  the  passing  of  the  old  Russia  with  its 
idyllic  ignorance,  simple  piety  and  village  socialism,  but 
Russia  is  too  rich  a  territory  to  remain  unexploited  and  the 
Germans  were  fast  changing  it  into  a  modern  industrial 
state.  And  so  all  the  commercial  classes  of  Holy  Russia 
are  now  clamoring  for  the  Pale  of  Settlement  to  be  abolished. 
The  Zemtsvos  or  agricultural  communities  of  the  Empire, 
and  the  Congress  of  the  towns,  the  all-Russian  Military 
Commercial  Conference,  the  all-Russian  Conference  of 
Lawyers,  the  Conference  of  the  Stock  Exchange  Com- 
mittees, even  the  Conference  of  the  Siberian  Municipali- 
ties, unanimously  echo  the  cry.  The  very  Cossacks  demand 
an  import  of  Jews  into  their  undeveloped  districts — indeed, 
Jews  are  by  no  means  unpopular  among  the  Russian  peas- 
antry; on  the  contrary,  Russia  is  the  only  country  where 
Judaism  gains  converts,  the  Saturdayites  and  the  new 
Israelites,  who  are  stricter  than  the  Jews  proper. 

I  must  not  deny  that  besides  the  commercial  demand 
there  is  also  an  idealistic  demand — indeed,  this  was  plain 
from  the  speeches  I  have  quoted.  A  very  noble  and  states- 
manlike pro- Jewish  manifesto  was  published  by  the  in- 
telligentsia— in  Russia  no  less  than  in  England  the  intel- 
lectual classes  understand  politics  better  than  the  Cabinet 
classes.  The  novelists  Gorky,  Andreyev  and  Mereshkovsky 
are  the  chief  contributors  to  a  book  just  issued,  called 
The  Shield  which  declares  that  the  treatment  of  the 
Jews  is  the  dishonor  of  Russia.  I  quote  some  detached 
sentences  from  Gorky's  introduction. 

"It  is  a  heavy  task — one  feels  painfully  awkward;  sug- 
gesting to  grown-up  and  educated  people:  Be  human. 
Hatred  toward  the  Jews  is  purely  zoological  or  pathological. 
The  Jews  are  human  beings  and  therefore  they  must  be 


438  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

free — as  all  others  are.  So  much  has  been  said  of  the 
glorious,  broad,  beautiful  Russian  soul.  One  begins  to  ask 
despairingly  where  really  is  its  breadth,  its  strength,  its 
beauty?  The  situation  of  the  Jews  in  Russia  is  an  ignominy 
to  Russian  culture:  it  is  a  result  of  our  negligence  toward 
ourselves.  It  is  our  conscience  that  is  blotted  by  the  poison 
of  calumny,  the  tears  and  blood  of  numberless  pogroms. 
The  Jews  are  more  European  than  we,  for  to  begin  with,  the 
feeling  of  respect  to  labor  and  to  human  life  is  more  de- 
veloped in  them.  I  admire  the  spiritual  struggle  of  the 
Jewish  people,  their  sturdy  idealism,  their  unshakable  be- 
lief in  the  victory  of  good  over  evil  and  in  the  possibilities 
of  happiness  on  earth.  The  Jews  are  the  old  and  powerful 
yeast  of  mankind.  They  have  always  elevated  its  spirit, 
bringing  new  and  stirring  noble  thoughts  and  calling  forth 
new  strivings  after  the  better  things.  We  Russians  might 
and  can  learn  much  from  the  Jews." 

Andreyev  goes  further  and  recalling  "the  heroism  of  the 
Jews  and  their  tragic  and  deep  love  for  the  land  of  their 
birth,"  confesses  that  he  suffers  by  their  persecution  and 
that  Russia's  allies  are  secretly  ashamed  of  her  barbarism, 
and  asks,  "Are  we  not  the  Jews  of  Europe,  looked  on  askance 
by  the  Western  nations?"  A  block  composed  of  groups  of 
the  Duma  and  Imperial  Council  of  all  parties  except  the 
extreme  right  and  the  extreme  left  has  long  demanded  the 
complete  abolition  of  all  Jewish  disqualifications — indeed, 
there  is  a  majority  for  this  demand  in  both  houses.  "What 
great  work  can  be  accomplished,"  asked  an  orator  in  the 
Duma,  "what  great  problem  solved  by  a  nation  in  which 
millions  of  citizens  are  treated  as  slaves  and  pariahs?" 
Even  the  bureaucracy  with  a  touch  of  right  feeling  has 
abolished  the  educational  restrictions  in  favor  of  the  rela- 
tives of  soldiers  at  the  front.  On  every  side  the  rotten 
fencing  of  the  Pale  is  giving  way  of  itself — at  one  brave 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      439 

knightly  blast  from  Sir  Edward  Grey's  horn  it  would 
collapse  like  the  walls  of  Jericho.1  Even  the  Poles  are 
beginning  to  bethink  themselves.  In  Warsaw,  under  the 
mitigated  affliction  of  the  Kaiser's  rule,  they  are  co-operat- 
ing with  the  Jews  in  keeping  public  order. 

Their  common  misfortunes,  said  Prince  Lubomirsky, 
the  Mayor  of  Warsaw,  would  beget  harmony.  Professor 
Yavorsky,  the  President  of  the  Chief  Polish  Council,  has 
published  at  Vienna  a  statement  admitting  that  Jews  should 
receive  full  rights  in  an  independent  Poland.  Whether  in 
Poland  or  in  Russia,  the  Jews  will  be  loyal  and  valuable 
citizens.  They  do  not  cherish  rancor.  A  Jewish  soldier 
saved  the  life  of  the  chairman  of  the  Jew-baiting  order,  the 
Double-Headed  Eagle.  "An  eye  for  an  eye  and  a  tooth  for  a 
tooth" — which  was  never  a  motto  for  vengeance,  but  only  a 
legal  maxim  for  the  Hebrew  courts  in  adjudging  compensa- 
tion for  bodily  damage — was  practically  abolished,  even 
in  the  courts,  centuries  before  the  Christian  era. 

It  is  with  grim  amusement  that  I  have  watched  this 
much-abused  maxim  of  the  barbarous  Jew  glorified  into  a 
popular  slogan  of  contemporary  Christendom.  No,  there 
will  be  no  danger  to  Russia  from  Jewish  emancipation.  The 
only  danger  will  be  to  the  Jewish  race  deprived  of  the  ring- 
fence  of  persecution  within  which  an  unintelligent  anti- 
Semitism  has  conserved  it.  Such  a  solution  of  the  Jewish 
problem,  unless  accompanied  by  the  concession  of  a  core  of 
nationality  under  a  Federal  concept,  might  well  be  the 
dissolution  of  the  Jew.2 

That  is  why  even  the  most  satisfactory  measure  of 
emancipation  would  leave  the  Jew  unsatisfied  if  the  peace 

1  Jews  at  the  moment  reside  in  every  Russian  town  except  those  containing 
royal  residences. 

2  Seventeen  per  cent  of  the  marriages  of  Jews  in  Germany  in  1911  were 
with  Christians,  in  1915  the  rate  had  risen  to  thirty-one  per  cent. 


440  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

settlement  produced  a  world  parliament,  as  some  hopelessly 
hopeful  speculators  still  anticipate.  The  Jews  would  not 
even  be  satisfied  with  the  more  practicable  and  limited 
Super-national  Authority  proposed  by  the  Fabian  Society. 
Like  the  Times'  Altas,  the  able  memorandum  inspired  by 
Mr.  S.  Woolf  is  utterly  unaware  of  Jews — a  final  proof  of 
their  lack  of  self-consciousness.  But  the  angle  from  which 
the  conscious  Jew  sees  the  world  is  like  the  angle  from  which 
the  homeless  tramp  peers  in  at  the  dinner  party.  I  have 
dramatically  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  German  war  lord  the 
argument  that  England's  loathing  for  Prussian  bellicosity 
is  only  the  psychology  of  the  successful  gambler  who 
wishes  to  break  off  the  game  at  the  moment  he  holds  the 
bulk  of  the  stakes.  And,  in  truth,  to  eternalize  the  momen- 
tary grouping  of  peoples  and  possessions  in  a  world  that  has 
hitherto  always  proceeded  by  flux  and  combat,  in  which 
empires  have  risen  and  set,  in  which  every  hill  has  been 
abased  and  every  valley  exalted  as  unfailingly  as  by  geologic 
process,  would  be  to  make  not  a  righteous  but  an  un- 
righteous peace. 

There  must,  if  the  flux  is  to  be  suddenly  frozen,  be  a 
universal  readjustment  on  the  basis  of  reason  and  love. 
Otherwise,  can  any  one  tell  me  why  Russia  should  be  left 
in  perpetual  possession  of  half  of  Europe  and  a  third  of 
Asia,  or  one-sixth  of  the  land  of  the  globe,  while  Jewry 
owns  not  a  single  square  inch  of  national  territory?  The 
Fabian  project  recognizes  between  forty  and  fifty  sov- 
ereign states.  I  know  these  sovereign  states.  One  of  the 
greatest  (America)  professes  to  have  the  right  to  exclude 
and  reship  the  poverty-stricken  European  emigrant  after 
he  has  sold  off  his  all  in  the  quest  for  a  better  labor  market. 
And  this,  with  a  territory  almost  as  large  as  Europe,  peo- 
pled by  little  more  than  twice  the  population  of  Great 
Britain.  A  sovereign  right,  Mr.  Cecil  Chesterton  proclaims 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      441 

it.  As  a  director  of  emigration,  whose  heart  has  been  torn 
by  these  tragedies,  I  spit  on  these  sovereign  rights. 

Mr.  Chesterton,  who  has  done  yeoman  service  in  America 
as  a  champion  of  the  allied  cause,1  does  not  seem  to  see 
that  for  a  petty  population  to  collar  a  continent  is  pure 
Prussianism.  The  Germans  demand  the  freedom  of  the 
seas.  The  Jews  demand  the  freedom  of  the  lands. 

And  these  great  powers,  that  are  to  be  confirmed  for 
all  time  in  their  great  possessions,  they  are  to  have  a  free 
hand  over  their  subjects.  The  supernational  authority, 
says  the  Fabian  scheme,  is  not  to  require  any  alteration 
in  their  internal  laws.  How  familiar  it  sounds!  " I  cannot 
interfere  in  the  internal  affairs  of  Russia."  The  hands  are 
the  hands  of  the  Fabians,  but  the  voice  is  the  voice  of 
Sir  Edward  Grey.  You  make  a  moral  desert  and  call  it 
peace. 

No;  for  the  Jew  your  world-peace  would  be  a  premature, 
an  all-too-conclusive  peace.  The  world  is  not  yet  ripe 
enough.  Leaden  instincts  cannot,  as  Herbert  Spencer 
pointed  out,  be  transmuted  into  the  gold  of  an  ethical 
civilization.  If  human  nature  were  ripe  for  peace,  any 
scheme,  however  bad,  would  ensure  it.  As  things  are,  the 
best  scheme  will  not  avail.  I  do  not  even  believe  in  these 
dramatic  eliminations  of  evil.  As  a  dramatist  myself,  I 
am  not  taken  in  by  "happy  endings" — I  know  that  the 
story  must  go  on,  though  the  curtain  has  fallen,  that  the 
tableau  breaks  up  and  the  devil  that  has  departed  by  the 
stage  door  may  fly  in  again  from  the  pit.  Still,  were  the 
landlessness  of  the  Jews  the  only  obstacle  to  universal 
Peace,  I  should  be  the  first  to  waive  their  claim.  Jerusa- 

1  Except  that  his  anti-Semitism  laid  him  and  his  country  open  to  such 
retorts  as  "If  you  are  the  spokesman  of  intellectual  England,  then  I  can 
understand  why  your  country  should  have  formed  an  alliance  with  the 
country  of  pogroms!"  (Salvoes  of  applause.)  The  Viereck  Chesterton  De- 
bate, Published  by  The  Fatherland  Corporation,  New  York. 


442  THE   WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

lem,  which  means  the  heritage  of  double  peace,  would  be 
better  built  so  than  by  actual  restoration. 

Though  half  my  manhood  has  been  devoted  to  the  quest 
for  a  Jewish  State,  I  have  never  regarded  a  world  settle- 
ment, based  on  racial  differences,  as  a  final  goal,  nor  do  I 
share  the  current  enthusiasm  for  the  smaller  nationalities. 
The  mere  fact  that  a  group  of  people  hates  its  neighbors 
affords  no  basis  for  reverence.  Moses  told  the  Jews,  "Thou 
shalt  love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself,"  and  Seneca  reminded 
the  imperial  Romans  that  all  men  are  sacred — homo  sacra 
res  homini.  Moreover,  the  world  always  has  been  and 
always  will  be  a  melting-pot.1  It  is  curious  that  even 
before  the  present  German  megalomania  began  Fichte 
claimed  the  French  as  a  people  of  Teutonic  stock,  no  less 
than  the  Spaniards  and  the  Italians,  and  it  is  true  that  a 
Gothic  strain  exists  in  them  all. 

The  alien  internment  camps  throughout  Europe  are 
like  scientific  illustrations  of  the  fusing  process  caught  in 
the  act.  As  for  Jewish  blood,  I  am  probably  the  only  per- 
son in  London  who  has  never  been  suspected  of  it.  The 
eighteenth  century  may  have  pushed  cosmopolitanism 
too  far.  The  nineteenth  reacted  with  equal  exaggeration 
to  nationalism,  and  the  twentieth  is  an  era  of  nationalism 
run  mad.2  With  Schechter,  the  great  Jewish  scholar, 
whose  loss  we  are  just  lamenting,  I  feel  that  for  salvation 
our  ravaged  world  will  have  to  turn  back  to  international 
ideals — and  these  the  old  Jewish  ideals,  "to  do  justice, 
have  mercy  and  walk  humbly  with  thy  God."  The  claims 

1  Even  the  Jews  have  developed  a  hybrid  strain  of  Spanish  Jew.    The 
Levantine  Jews,  expelled  from  Spain  about  1492,  still  have  journals  in  the 
Spanish  of  Cervantes  and  a  loyal  sentiment  for  King  Alfonso. 

2  Lord  Acton  (from  the  Catholic  standpoint)  considered  that  "  the  Treaty 
of  Nationality  is  more  absurd  and  criminal  than  the  Treaty  of  Socialism." 
(History  of  Freedom.)    The  worst  of  trying  to  kill  two  birds  with  one 
stone  is  that  it  often  falls  between  both. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT     443 

of  the  Jewish  race  do  not  rest  on  its  separate  blood,  but  on 
its  quality  and  its  history. 

XI 

I  have  referred  to  the  funniness  of  Thackeray's  burlesque 
of  Disraeli.  And  yet  I  should  be  quite  content  to  take  my 
summary  of  the  Jewish  position  from  Codlingsby.  "Over 
the  entire  world/'  mused  the  Marquis,  "spreads  a  vast 
brotherhood,  suffering,  silent,  scattered,  sympathizing, 
waiting — an  immense  Freemasonry.  Once  this  widespread 
band  was  an  Arabian  clan — a  little  nation  alone  and  out- 
lying amongst  the  mighty  monarchies  of  ancient  time, 
the  Megatheria  of  history.  The  sails  of  their  rare  ships 
might  be  seen  in  the  Egyptian  waters;  the  camels  of  their 
caravans  might  thread  the  sands  of  Baalbec,  or  wind 
through  the  date-groves  of  Damascus:  their  flag  was  raised 
not  ingloriously,  in  many  wars,  against  mighty  odds;  but 
'twas  a  small  people,  and  on  one  dark  night  the  Lion  of 
Judah  went  down  before  Vespasian's  Eagles,  and  in  flame 
and  death  and  struggle  Jerusalem  agonized  and  died." 

Truth,  you  see,  will  out,  even  in  a  jester's  mouth,  for  the 
art  of  burlesque,  which  depends  on  the  assumption  that 
there  is  nothing  great  or  romantic,  stumbles  into  sheer 
reality  when  the  faces  are  so  strange  and  tragic  that  the 
highfalutin'  of  parody  is  too  lowly  rather  than  too  lofty 
for  them.  Thackeray  was  no  less  veraciously  inspired 
here  than  George  Eliot  hi  Daniel  Deronda.  The  picture 
only  fails  in  completeness  because  Thackeray — correctly 
following  his  model — laid  too  much  stress  on  the  material 
romance  of  the  ships  and  camels  and  warriors  of  ancient 
Judaea,  and  neglected  the  infinitely  more  important  king- 
dom of  the  spirit  whose  foundations  Judaea  laid. 

"In  the  eighth  century  before  Christ,"  says  Professor 
Huxley,  "in  the  heart  of  a  world  of  idolatrous  polytheists, 


444  THE  WAR  FOR  THE  WORLD 

the  Hebrew  prophets  put  forth  a  conception  of  religion 
which  appears  to  me  as  wonderful  an  inspiration  of  genius 
as  the  art  of  Phidias  or  the  science  of  Aristotle."  Eight 
centuries  later  the  conception  to  which  Huxley  paid  tribute 
was  crystallized  and  carried  to  a  wider  audience  by  a  young 
Jew  from  Galilee  and  six  centuries  after  that  was  accom- 
modated to  the  Arab  mind  by  another  Semite  near  Mecca. 
Without  a  knowledge  of  the  Bible,  which,  in  the  words 
of  Lord  Bryce,  is  "the  one  piece  of  literature,  ancient  or 
modern,  that  is  common  to  all  the  peoples  of  European 
origin  in  both  hemispheres,"  European  art  and  literature 
would  be  unintelligible.  After  collision  with  every  great 
ancient  empire  and  persecution  by  every  modern,  the  race 
that  wrote  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New  survived  to 
write  the  gospels  of  modern  socialism,  and  remains  to-day 
one  of  the  factors  of  human  evolution,  one  of  the  roads  to 
the  super-race. 

XII 

Its  existence  even  in  dispersion  enriches  the  world, 
giving  in  our  own  day  a  Meldola  to  British  science,  a  Berg- 
son  to  French  philosophy,  a  Schnitzler  to  Austrian  drama, 
a  Berenson  to  American  art  criticism,  an  Ehrlich  to  German 
medicine,  a  Luzzatti  to  Italian  statesmanship,  a  Josef 
Israels  to  Dutch  painting,  a  Brandes  to  Scandinavian 
criticism,  a  Ronetti  Roman  to  Rumanian  poetry,  a  Rubin- 
stein to  Russian  music,  a  Vambery  to  Hungarian  adven- 
ture, an  Enver  Pasha  to  Turkish  arms,  a  Zamenhof  to 
Esperanto  internationalism,  a  Sarah  Bernhardt  to  the 
world's  stage,  a  Leo  Bakst  to  the  newest  Nobel  Prize-list.1 
Concentrated  on  a  soil  of  its  own,  under  conditions  that 

1  Six  other  Jews  have  received  the  Nobel  prize — Albert  Michelson,  physics 
(Chicago),  Gabriel  Lippmann,  color-painting  (Paris),  Paul  Ehrlich,  medicine 
(Frankfort),  Professor  Aster,  jurist  (Holland),  Alfred  Fried,  Peace-advocate 
(Germany),  Dr.  Barony,  otologist  (Austria),  now  a  prisoner  of  war  in  Russia. 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      445 

might  stimulate  afresh  its  spiritual  genius,  this  stock 
might  well  produce  a  superstate,  a  kultur,  not  of  mili- 
tarism but  of  humanism. 

But  where  is  this  state  to  be? 

That  question  was  first  mooted  in  this  very  hall  by  the 
International  Council  of  the  organization  over  which  I 
have  the  honor  to  preside,  for  the  Zionist  movement  had 
plumped  for  Palestine  without  any  practical  investigation. 
The  limitations  of  time  prevent  me  from  discussing  the 
answers  in  any  detail.  Joseph  Chamberlain  it  was  who 
first  tempted  the  late  Dr.  Herzl,  the  great  Zionist  leader, 
with  portions  of  the  British  Empire,  first  with  El-Arisch 
in  the  Sinai  Peninsula,  and,  when  the  Khedival  Govern- 
ment made  a  difficulty  about  deflecting  the  water — with  a 
small  plateau  in  British  East  Africa.  I  converted  Mr. 
Chamberlain  to  the  conception  of  not  a  plateau  but  the 
whole  of  British  East  Africa  turned  into  a  British  Judaea 
and  had  the  conception  been  carried  out,  England  to-day 
would  have  had  a  Maccabean  force  to  defend  that  zone 
of  war  against  the  Germans.  My  organization  has  not 
dealt  with  governments  on  any  basis  but  the  Bismarckian 
do  ut  des.  But  a  Chamberlain  is  rare.  It  apparently  re- 
quires a  most  abnormal  statesman  to  see  that  an  empire 
which  is  trying  to  hold  a  fifth  of  the  globe  with  an  external 
force  of  ten  million  white,  would  be  strengthened  by  a 
powerful  and  well-populated  Jewish  colony. 

Lord  Strathcona  saw  this  as  regards  Canada  but  not 
Sir  Wilfrid  Laurier.  Mr.  Deakin  saw  it  for  Australia  but 
not  his  local  Premiers.  Your  Colonial  Briton  is  ever  a 
dog-in-the-manger.  We  have  dealt  also  with  Turkey,  not 
for  Palestine,  but  for  Cyrenaica,  since  bloodily  and  im- 
perfectly annexed  by  Italy,  despite  the  report  of  our  scien- 
tific commission  that  it  was  not  good  enough  even  for  the 
homeless  Jews.  And  a  similar  expedition  went  to  Angola 


446  THE  WAR  FOR   THE  WORLD 

by  arrangement  with  the  Portuguese  Colonial  Office,  and 
its  report,  which  we  have  published,  was  to  have  been  dis- 
cussed at  Zurich  in  the  very  month  the  war  broke  out, 
together  with  an  earlier  proposal  for  re-converting  Mesopo- 
tamia into  a  world-granary  by  irrigating  it — at  the  cost 
of  a  few  hours  of  Armageddon — and  settling  it  with  Jewish 
homesteads. 

The  project  has  been  recently  revived  by  Mr.  Hermann 
Landau,  a  philanthropist,  who  has  the  advantage  over  me 
with  the  public  of  having  himself  made  money.  He  con- 
tends that  there  is  a  profit  of  ninety  millions  in  the  scheme, 
so  that  I,  who  only  estimated  it  at  twenty-two  millions, 
have  begun  to  loom  as  the  soberer  business  man  of  the  two. 
Mesopotamia,  you  will  remember,  is  not  only  a  blessed 
word,  but  the  cradle  of  the  Jewish  race,  with  a  Hebrew 
tradition  older  than  Palestine's  and  embracing  also  a  later 
period  of  bloom.  For  a  thousand  years  Babylonia  was  the 
very  focus  of  Judaism.  Jews  have  lived  there  under  the 
successive  domination  of  the  Greeks,  the  Parthians,  the 
Persians,  the  Arabs,  the  Mongols  and  the  Turks,  and  are 
still  there  to-day  in  parts  now  under  the  British  flag,  which 
according  to  Sir  John  Jackson  the  Arabs  would  like  to  see 
waving  over  all  Mesopotamia.  Did  I  not  say  that  even 
Thackeray's  burlesque  could  not  reach  the  romance  of 
reality? 

And  finally  there  is  Palestine,  which,  as  the  Manchester 
Guardian  explains,  is  now  necessary  to  the  British  Empire, 
inasmuch  as  "there  can  be  no  satisfactory  defence  of 
Egypt  or  the  Suez  Canal  so  long  as  Palestine  is  in  the  oc- 
cupation of  a  hostile  or  possibly  hostile  power."  If  Britain 
took  Palestine  she  could  make  no  greater  stroke  of  policy 
than  to  call  in  the  Jews  to  regenerate  it  for  her.  Failing 
this  conquest,  even  if  Turkey,  under  German  shrewdness, 
made  a  similar  offer  to  the  Jews,  I  for  one  would  hold  no 


JEWISH  FACTOR  IN  THE  WAR  AND  THE  SETTLEMENT      447 

truck  with  the  assassins  of  the  Armenians,  should  it  turn 
out  that  the  Turks  proper  and  not  the  Kurds  are  respon- 
sible. The  acceptance  of  Palestine  from  such  a  power 
would  be  an  anti-climax  to  Jewish  history.1 

1Mr.  Morgenthau  suggested  that  Turkey  sell  Palestine  to  the  Jews 
and  found  the  ministers  willing.  They  even  discussed  whether  it  should 
be  turned  into  a  Republic.  Prince  Nicholas,  despatching  Jewish  soldiers  to 
the  Caucasus,  is  said  to  have  told  them  to  go  and  conquer  Palestine  for  them- 
selves. Of  course  Russia  and  France  also  claim  Palestine,  and  five  monarchs 
rejoice  in  the  title  of  "King  of  Jerusalem,"  the  Sultan  of  Turkey,  the  Kings 
of  Spain  and  Italy,  the  Emperor  of  Austria  and — ex-King  Manoel!  Sir 
Edward  Pears  suggests  an  international  Commission,  a  correspondent  of  the 
Near  East  proposes  tacking  Palestine  on  to  Egypt.  At  the  Peace  Con- 
ference, says  Gustave  Herv6,  in  summing  up  the  reforms  necessary,  "  La 
Palestine  i  la  vieille  et  glorieuse  nation  juive  qui  depuis  deux  mille  ans  at- 
tend si  he"roiquement,  dans  certains  pays  ou  elle  est  persecuted,  la  venue  du 
Messie  et  le  regne  de  la  justice  et  de  la  paix  sur  la  terre  en  tie"  re!  (La  Guerre 
Sociale,  Paris,  February  2,  1915.) 

The  following  correspondence  appeared  in  the  Daily  Chronicle  of  Novem- 
ber, 1914: 

TO  MR.   ZANGWILL 

[Per  favor  of  the  Daily  Chronicle] 

Dear  Mr.  Zangwill, — And  now,  what  is  to  prevent  the  Jews  having  Pales- 
tine and  restoring  a  real  Judaea? — Yours  very  sincerely, 

H.  G.  Wells. 
To  MR.  WELLS 
[Per  favor  of  the  Daily  Chronicle] 

DEAR  MR.  WELLS, — Your  War  in  the  Air,  published  in  1908,  has  become  a 
reality  so  soon  that  I  dare  not  reply  too  sceptically  to  your  suggestion  that 
the  time  is  ripe  to  recreate  the  old  Judaea  hi  Palestine.  That  idea  is  cer- 
tainly in  the  air.  And,  enormous  as  are  the  obstacles  and  difficulties — 
difficulties  which  have  led  me  to  suggest  a  new  Judaea  in  Canada  or  else- 
where— they  would  assuredly  lessen  if  Englishmen  of  your  stamp  would 
work  to  ensure  British  suzerainty  for  the  new  State.  But  grateful  as  all 
true  Jews  would  be  for  such  help  from  Englishmen,  they  could  only  accept 
it  if  its  motive  was  pro- Jewish,  not  anti- Jewish,  justice  and  not  Jew-hate. 
Palestine  could  only  receive  and  support  the  Jews  in  small  instalments,  and 
as  the  majority  of  the  thirteen  millions  must  long  inhabit  their  present  homes, 
an  offer  of  Palestine,  coupled  with  an  aspiration,  or  worse!  a  policy  for  the 
clearance  of  other  countries  of  Jews — such  as  Stephen  Graham  has  so  naively 
suggested  for  Poland — would  be  a  trap  from  which  I  should  do  my  best  to 
dissuade  my  fellow- Jews.  Nay  morel  No  bait  of  Palestine  will  lessen  the 


448  THE  WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

But  even  under  British  suzerainty  the  restoration  of  the 
Jews  would  not  be  easy.  Despite  the  heroic  creations  of 
Jewish  colonies — now  alas!  half  destroyed — the  Jews  hold 
too  few  vested  interests  in  the  soil  to  have  a  claim  to  it  on 
any  basis  of  realpolitik.  They  numbered,  even  before  the 
great  war  emigration,  only  100,000  out  of  700,000,  mainly 
Arabs,  and  possessed  only  2  per  cent  of  the  soil.  Unless, 
therefore,  the  Arabs  would  trek  into  Arabia,  or  could  be 
peacefully  expropriated,  any  government  set  up  on  a  con- 
stitutional democratic  basis  would  result  not  in  a  Jewish 
autonomy,  but  an  Arab  autonomy. 

It  all  requires  a  radically  imaginative  policy,  a  dealing 
in  futures  as  well  as  pasts  by  men  ready  to  rescue  human 
history  from  its  monotonous  factors  of  blood  and  gold.  Na- 
poleon, under  the  spell  of  the  forty  centuries  that  regarded 
him  from  the  Pyramids,  announced  his  design  to  restore 
the  Jews  to  their  land.  Will  England,  with  Egypt  equally 
at  her  feet,  carry  out  the  plan  she  foiled  Napoleon  in? 

Had  she  the  power  and  the  genius  to  do  so,  a  new  chapter 
would  be  opened  in  the  history  of  mankind,  the  ends  of  the 
ages  would  meet,  and  the  "  tribe  of  the  wandering  foot  and 
weary  breast,"  which  for  nineteen  hundred  years  has 
prayed  for  Palestine  some  twenty  times  a  day,  would  find 
itself  on  its  holy  soil  under  the  aegis  of  the  greatest  empire 
in  the  world,  victorious  after  the  greatest  struggle  in  her 
history.  And  inasmuch  as  by  her  union  with  Russia  Eng- 
land would  have  marched  to  this  victory  over  the  bodies 
of  the  Russian  Jews,  her  restoration  of  Palestine  to  their 
race  would  be  at  once  a  peace  offering  to  her  own  conscience 
and  a  consoling  assurance  to  the  martyrs  of  the  Pale  that 
they  had  not  agonized  in  vain. 

insistence  of  our  demand  for  equal  rights  in  Russia,  Rumania,  or  wherever 

anti-Semitism  drags  down  civilization. 

Very  sincerely  yours, 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL. 


TWO  LETTERS  TO  THE   TIMES 


To  the  Editor  of  The  Times. 
Sir, 

As  your  correspondent  mentions  me  in  connection  with 
Mr.  Chamberlain's  offer  of  a  territory  to  the  Zionists,  I 
trust  I  may  be  permitted  to  correct  his  history.  It  is  in- 
deed curious  to  represent  the  rejection  of  the  East  African 
plateau  as  having  occurred  with  "no  dissentient  voice," 
when  he  himself  scarcely  conceals  that  a  large  minority 
of  the  Zionists  seceded  and  formed  the  Jewish  Territorial 
Organization  rather  than  countenance  this  act  of  folly. 
The  project  for  which  I  won  the  sympathy  of  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain was,  however,  a  far  wider  scheme  than  that  originally 
suggested — nothing  less,  in  fact,  than  the  conversion  of 
British  East  Africa  into  a  British- Jewish  colony.  British 
East  Africa  was  then  a  nondescript  possession,  once  de- 
signed to  afford  an  emigration  outlet  for  Hindus,  later  hailed 
as  a  paradise  for  Britons,  and  suffering,  like  the  British 
Empire  in  general,  from  a  confused  and  vacillating  policy. 
I  suggested  to  the  late  Mr.  Lyttleton — and  my  elaborate 
scheme  doubtless  still  lies  in  the  archives  of  the  Colonial 
Office — how  British  East  Africa  might  be  developed  so  as 
to  strengthen  this  Empire  of  all  creeds  and  colors  by  a  loyal 
and  grateful  Jewish  land,  populated  mainly  by  Jews  from 
Russia — agricultural  pioneers  in  the  first  instance  from  the 
Jewish  farm  colonies  in  the  West  and  South  of  Russia. 

It  is  characteristic  of  Mr.  Chamberlain's  statesmanship 

449 


450  THE   WAR   FOR   THE   WORLD 

that  when  I  unfolded  this  scheme  to  him  at  his  house  in 
Prince's-gardens  he  exclaimed,  "  There'll  be  the  devil  to 
pay,  but  I'll  stick  to  you  through  thick  and  thin."  He 
promised  to  take  the  platform  on  behalf  of  the  scheme 
whenever  I  should  give  the  word.  Mr.  Chamberlain,  then 
at  the  height  of  his  vitality,  was  keenly  conscious  of  the 
haphazard  fashion  in  which  the  British  Empire  had  grown 
up,  and  as  keenly  anxious  to  introduce  order  and  reason  into 
its  future.  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  showed  a  similar  imagi- 
native sympathy  with  the  British- Jewish  scheme,  which, 
when  East  Africa  became  difficult,  evolved  into  the  general 
conception  of  creating  a  Jewish  land  of  refuge  in  some  part 
of  the  Empire  in  need  of  white  population. 

Two  such  parts  leap  to  the  eye — Australia,  whose  doleful 
and  dangerous  emptiness  The  Times  correspondent  is  now 
illustrating  afresh  (Australia  almost  as  large  as  Europe 
and  with  a  far  smaller  population  than  London),  and  Can- 
ada, another  and  still  greater  continent,  in  which  (according 
to  a  member  of  the  Dominion  Cabinet  whose  speech  on 
Dominion  Day  was  reported  in  your  issue  of  the  2nd  inst.) 
of  441  million  acres  of  possible  farm  lands  only  36  million 
acres  are  under  cultivation.  Yet  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  told 
me  he  could  not  possibly  offer  us  a  tract,  and  the  late  Lord 
Strathcona  said  my  application  was  10  years  too  late — 
Canada  was  now  getting  all  the  immigration  it  needed. 
(He  seems  to  have  been  too  optimistic,  for  the  latest  statis- 
tics show  a  considerable  falling  off.)  As  for  Australia, 
I  found  Sir  Alfred  Deakin  as  inflexible — if  as  personally 
charming — as  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier,  nor  did  a  lengthy  ne- 
gotiation with  Sir  Newton  Moore  regarding  West  Australia 
(which  dots  the  population  of  Portsmouth  over  a  million 
square  miles)  yield  any  better  results. 

Sir,  your  columns  bear  daily  witness  to  the  troubles  and 
problems  which  are  avenging  the  illogicality  of  the  Empire. 


TWO  LETTERS  TO  THE  TIMES  451 

To  hold  nearly  one-fourth  of  the  globe  with  only  (outside 
these  islands)  some  10  million  white  men  is  certainly  a 
miracle  of  history.  But  it  seems  to  me  a  very  unstable 
miracle,  and  an  offer  to  provide  white  population  should 
not,  I  submit,  have  received  so  many  rebuffs.  To  populate 
the  great  empty  spaces  of  the  British  Empire  with  the  sur- 
plus population — under  a  falling  birth-rate — of  two  little 
islands,  is  impossible,  and  in  so  far  as  it  is  attempted  it 
calls  forth  protest  against  "Deserted  villages."  Never 
was  there  a  more  comical  example  of  the  desire  to  eat  one's 
cake  and  to  have  it  too.  Even  from  a  moral  point  of  view 
I  question  the  right  of  any  country  to  hold  territories  it 
cannot  populate  while  other  races  are  agonizing  for  lack  of 
"a  place  in  the  sun." 

Yours  obediently, 
ISRAEL  ZANGWILL,  President. 


U 

[This  letter  was  in  type  but  was  withdrawn  by  me  when  the  war 
broke  out,  to  await  a  more  favorable  opportunity  of  securing  at- 
tention.] 

To  the  Editor  of  The  Times. 
Sir, 

Mr.  Chamberlain's  incursion  into  Jewish  politics  split 
the  Zionist  movement  precisely  as  his  dynamic  personality 
split  parties  more  in  the  world's  eye.  But  if  a  minority 
splits  off,  leaving  the  majority  to  its  own  devices,  the  his- 
torian, according  to  your  Jewish  Correspondent,  is  justified 
in  informing  an  ignorant  public  that  the  voting  was  unani- 
mous. This  is  surely  to  write  history  with  words  rather  than 
with  facts.  To  anyone  who  remembers  that  the  fight  over 
the  East  African  plateau  offered  by  Mr.  Chamberlain  to 
the  Zionists  was  one  of  the  bitterest  in  Jewish  history,  the 


452  THE  WAR  FOR   THE   WORLD 

statement  that  the  rejection  was  carried  "with  no  dissen- 
tient voice"  must  appear  a  monumental  combination  of  the 
suppressio  veri  with  the  suggestio  falsi. 

Equally  amazing  is  your  contributor's  assertion  that  not  a 
small  plateau  in  the  far  interior,  but  the  whole  of  British 
East  Africa  was  at  stake.  This  is,  indeed,  a  nouveau  fait — 
so  new  that  it  never  emerged  during  the  three  years  of  the 
struggle,  and  no  hint  of  it  appears  either  in  Lord  Lans- 
downe's  formal  offer  or  in  the  formal  refusal  by  the  Zionist 
Congress.  But  even  if  it  were  as  true  as  it  is  new,  a  gradual 
spread  of  Jewish  colonization  from  a  small  nucleus  under 
merely  municipal  rights  is  far  removed  from  the  proposi- 
tion which  I  laid  before  Mr.  Lyttelton,  and  which  he  read, 
he  told  me,  "in  a  glow:"  to  wit,  that  British  East  Africa, 
which  was  run  at  a  loss  and  had  no  specific  character,  "be 
given  in  trust  to  the  Jewish  people  to  be  worked  up  into  a 
model  British  colony."  To  England  it  was  a  white  elephant 
— even  to-day  Mr.  Lloyd  George  has  to  make  hay  of 
£250,000  to  feed  it  withal — and  I  proposed  that,  with  due 
safeguarding  of  existing  interests,  the  Jewish  people  should 
assume  all  financial  responsibility  and  take  it  over  as  a 
land  of  refuge  for  their  oppressed  masses  under  the  name  of 
British  Judaea  or  British  Palestine,  with  a  British- Jewish 
Governor  as  a  symbol  to  both  peoples  of  its  dual  destiny. 
Mr.  Lyttelton  agreed  that  under  such  a  scheme  Sir  Matthew 
Nathan  (now,  but  not  then,  a  member  of  the  council  of 
our  organization)  would  provide  an  ideal  figure  for  the 
post.  That  this  conception  has  never  been  in  Mr.  Chamber- 
lain's mind  was  quite  clear  from  his  startled  acceptance  of 
it.  His  enthusiasm  was  endorsed  in  the  Government  that 
followed  by  Mr.  Winston  Churchill  in  a  letter  of  noble 
eloquence.  It  was  only  from  East  Africa  itself  that  opposi- 
tion ever  came.  And  so  it  has  been  with  all  our  attempts 
to  find  a  territory  within  the  British  Empire.  The  man  at 


TWO  LETTERS  TO  THE  TIMES  453 

the  centre  sees  the  perspective;  the  man  in  the  colony  has 
eyes  only  for  himself. 

And  this  reminds  me  to  say  that  my  former  letter  did 
injustice  to  Lord  Strathcona  if  it  conveyed  the  suggestion 
that  the  epical  imagination  which  had  thrown  the  Canadian 
Pacific  Railway  across  a  pathless  continent  failed  to  see  the 
value  of  a  Jewish  colony  to  the  land  he  loved  and  had  half- 
created.  I  well  remember  the  marvellous  octogenarian  in 
his  black  skull-cap  jumping  on  a  chair  to  point  out  to  me 
on  a  wall-map  the  territory  he  thought  the  Dominion 
Government  would  allot  to  us.  It  was  he  who,  during  the 
Imperial  Conference,  arranged  my  interview  with  Sir 
Wilfrid  Laurier  and  it  was  "the  man  from  home"  who  in- 
sisted that  Canada  could  oleal  only  with  the  individual 
settler.  In  vain  I  pointed  out  to  Sir  Wilfred  Laurier  that 
the  rigorous  Sunday  law  made  Canada  almost  impossible 
for  the  individual  settler  who  valued  his  Judaism,  and  that 
an  empty  land  like  Canada  had  a  duty  towards  a  people 
that  had  just  undergone  one  of  the  greatest  massacres  in 
all  history.  Canada,  he  replied,  could  not  alter  its  policy 
under  any  circumstances. 

Whether,  however,  at  a  period  when,  according  to  Mrs. 
Sidney  Webb,  the  artificial  restriction  of  the  birth-rate 
menaces  the  whole  future  of  white  civilization,  when  even 
France  must  import  colored  labor,  and  when  Canada  her- 
self is  receiving  the  lesson  of  a  reduced  immigration,  the 
Canadians  will  really  prove  such  Medes  and  Persians  or 
such  dogs  in  the  manger  I  take  leave  to  doubt.  Mr.  Bor- 
den,  I  noted,  recently  wrote  to  you  asserting  that  Canada 
must  have  a  voice  in  the  affairs  of  the  Empire.  But  is  the 
Empire  to  have  no  corresponding  voice  in  the  affairs  of 
Canada?  Are  the  colonies  always  to  put  their  own  interests, 
or  imagined  interests,  first,  irrespective  of  how  they  embroil 
or  disserve  the  Empire?  From  conversations  within  the 


454  THE   WAR  FOR  THE   WORLD 

last  few  days  with  leading  British  statesmen  I  find  there 
is  much  sympathy  with  the  magnanimous  view  of  Mr. 
Jesse  Collings  that  a  Jewish  colony  would  be  at  once  an 
asset  to  the  Empire  and  a  vindication  of  its  ancient  quixotic 
tradition.  But  I  feel  sure  that  in  whatever  part  of  the 
Empire  it  was  proposed  to  plant  the  colony  a  cry  of  agony 
and  protest  would  go  up. 

I  am  well  aware  that  a  Jewish  colony  in  Australia  or 
Canada  could  never  reach  the  measure  of  autonomy  pos- 
sible in  a  mere  possession  like  East  Africa.  But  under  the 
general  laws  of  the  Commonwealth  or  the  Dominion  a  new 
State  could  easily  be  carved  out  from  the  vast  area  of  un- 
occupied territory.  Canada  and  Australia  are  continents 
that  have  the  misfortune  or  the  modesty  to  mistake  them- 
selves for  countries.  They  apply  to  three  million  square 
miles  conceptions  that  would  be  narrow  for  three  hundred 
thousand.  But  three  million  square  miles  of  homogeneous 
humanity  have  never  yet  afflicted  our  planet.  Sir  Wilfred 
Laurier  himself  belongs  to  the  French  section  of  Canada, 
and  I  pray  that  even  Australia  may  escape  the  deadly 
monotony  which  is  her  fond  and  foolish  dream. 

Yours  obediently, 

ISRAEL  ZANGWILL. 


ENVOI! 

OLIVER  SINGING 

Oliver's  singing 

Comes  down  to  my  study, 

As  I  sit  in  the  twilight 

Poring  the  problem 

Of  this  battered  old  planet, 

This  universe  tragical, 

Bloodily  twirling. 

Nearly  all  his  small  span 

And  through  both  of  his  birthdays 

This  senseless  hell-fury, 

This  horror  has  hurtled, 

Yet  he  lies  in  his  cot, 

Happy,  sleepy  and  singing. 

This — I  muse — at  the  core 

Of  our  battered  old  planet, 

Something  young  and  untainted, 

Something  gay  and  undaunted, 

Like  a  bud  in  its  whiteness, 

Like  a  bird  in  its  joy, 

Through  the  foul-smelling  darkness, 

Through  the  muck  and  the  slaughter, 

Pushes  steadily  forward, 

Singing. 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 
455 


'HE  following  pages  contain   advertisements  of 
books  by  the  same  author  or  on  kindred  subjects 


"  Of  the  original  plays  presented  in  London  in  191 1  the  finest 
was  Mr.  Israel  Zangwill's  '  The  War  God.'  "—Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

The  War  God :    A  Tragedy  in  Five  Acts 
BY  ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 

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SOME  EXPERT  OPINIONS 

"A  very  great  tragedy,  full  of  genius.  Its  language  moves  in 
blank  verse  as  the  appropriate  ritual  of  this  momentous  theme." 

— Mrs.  Alice  Meynell. 

"Mr.  Zangwill  is  a  man  of  genius.  He  has  put  on  the  stage  a 
play  which  grapples  with  reality  in  its  grimmest  form.  .  .  . 
The  play  is  big  with  the  fate  of  nations.  .  .  .  No  play  of  our 
time  cuts  deeper  into  the  flesh  of  reality." — Mr.  James  Douglas. 

"I  admire  the  courage  which  led  Mr.  Zangwill  to  essay  this 
task  of  high  emprise.  ...  It  is  a  play  which  the  large  audience 
followed  with  intense  interest  and  discussed  with  great  earnest- 
ness between  the  acts." — William  T.  Stead. 

"An  extremely  vigorous  piece  of  work,  full  alike  of  thought 
and  dramatic  power." — Dotty  Telegraph. 

The  Melting  Pot 

BY  ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 

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out  with  the  mastery  of  technique  and  the  vigor  of  plot  con- 
struction which  have  distinguished  Mr.  Zangwill's  work  in  the 
past.  It  is  probably  the  most  eloquent  representation  of  Jewish 
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people  of  this  country. 

The  Next  Religion:    A  Play  in  Three  Acts 

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Children  of  the  Ghetto 


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Each  of  these  tales  is  deliciously  amusing.  There  is  a  quiet 
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Heine-like  sparkle,  and  never  a  sting. 

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BY  ISRAEL  ZANGWILL 
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In  this  play  Mr.  Zangwill  attacks  modern  problems  with 
characteristic  force  and  originality.  The  scene  is  a  provincial 
English  town,  the  time  the  present,  and  the  method  of  handling 
the  theme  the  classical  form.  The  central  character  in  the 
action  is  a  clergyman  whose  past  life  involves  him  in  a  series 
of  incidents  which  give  rise  to  several  intensely  dramatic  epi- 
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significant. 

"From  Israel  Zangwill  one  may  always  expect  a  'strong'  play. 
He  is  invariably  dynamic." — Chicago  Post. 


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The  Restoration  of  Europe 

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BY  H.  H.  POWERS 

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